A Leap In Anger
by Gojirob
Summary: Sam Beckett leaps into a friend he thought long dead--Doctor David Banner. Things fall apart, but somethings just might come together, if Ziggy's prophecy of doom and hungry reporter Jack McGee can be put off.
1. Prologue : The Two Scientists

Prologue - The Two Scientists

AUGUST 15TH, 1991, SOMEWHERE ON THE ARIZONA/NEW MEXICO BORDER

The drifter was being beaten. He was always being beaten. He was *dead*, and so forced to take only the most menial of jobs, jobs that required no ID or other papers. Jobs that were hard to find nowadays and even harder to keep for any real length of time. Jobs that very often had the lowest sort of individual as co-worker. Many of these were on the run themselves, but for reasons far less legitimate than his. They were people who were quick to anger, and quicker still to hit. People who didn't like his tone, or something else, usually vague, about the drifter. It didn't matter. For his scientist's training simply hadn't prepared him for dealing with people like this, people who, for no good reason, just didn't like him. Before, in their anger, they didn't like him. Now, they would, with their fists and feet, make him angry. Yet they wouldn't like him any better now, though. They would learn in the hardest way never to make him angry. They wouldn't like him when he was angry.

He tried like hell to hold the demon back, for their sakes. He could never tell what his anger was going to do, and he did not wish to become a murderer. It had been too close a thing, far too many times. But he had a small comfort. He knew from harsh experience that their easily sparked but finite rage would be spent soon. Showing no resistance would disgust them and drive them away, while they scornfully called the bravest man they would likely ever meet for a craven coward. But which would happen first, the mundane exhaustion of stupid men or the unleashing of a brilliant man's righteous rage? Even as his face and torso were repeatedly slammed, he knew he couldn't afford the attention the latter option would bring. He also knew he was rapidly approaching the point of no return and no choice.

More than once, Dr. Kimble's twenty-year-old book on his hellish time outside the law had shown him the way to crawl along society's underbelly, to fit in where he was not supposed to. He had met and befriended many good people this way, people with whom he even shared his problem. Yet even the good contacts could in some cases prove a danger. While a man in his position by definition left few footsteps, so it was that every last such footstep was a potential obstruction in his search for an end to his life of false names and tearful goodbyes.

None of this mattered to his attackers, differing in names and faces over the years, but exactly the same in their insatiable itch for a fight which they always found and always regretted. The drifter's anger, which he always tried to shield these lowlifes from, still made him sloppy, and cost him valuable common sense and clear judgment. It made him believe that they should simply leave him alone. By the time he caught himself when they inevitably got annoyed by this perception, it was always too late.

As a child, he had lost his mother to an illness she was not strong enough to survive. His first wife he had lost to a simple car door fused shut by fire and impact, a situation no normal human could have altered, and yet he knew for a fact that some humans had done just that. His second wife had known his awesome secret, a secret that should have given her the strength to survive, yet it hadn't. It had all made him a certain way. He was what he was, his nature set in a hard stone even his anger couldn't smash. There was no going back to change the past, despite what the young couple at the university had always said, when he was their friend and student teacher.

Time was immutable, but strength could change things, if properly applied. He knew this for a fact. It was his mantra, his holy grail, his own grand unification theory of absolutely everything. But through his mourning for his first wife, his overdose, the death of his lover and colleague after his initial mutation, and his need for flight, this obsessive quest for strength had brought him the equally obsessive attentions of an ambitious tabloid journalist. It had also meant hard travel through a succession of more corrupt small towns than even chaos theory allowed for. Doctor David Banner was living the nightmare side of his experiments, sometimes feeling irredeemably lost.

Suddenly, he realized he couldn't even remember why these fellows were hitting him. With that, Banner realized he was in trouble. Yet this once, the trouble would pass, however briefly, without what he regarded as the inevitable consequences. The pain subsided. The thugs weren't there. He was in a small waiting area, with an unseen guard firmly urging him to just sit tight. The creature within him, always shouting in his skull, was at that moment a distant echo. Still there, but separated by a great deal more space than usual. Space-and, somehow he knew-time. Yet a man on the run does not trust the unknown willingly, and soon David Banner would insist on knowing where he was. This would prove to be one of several mistakes, while in his new surroundings.

AUGUST 15TH, 1991

He awoke to find himself in the past. The traveler through time began the internal monologue that calibrated and focused him in a life where one of the most basic things was completely out of focus, and perhaps an eternity beyond calibration. Eternity, as Doctor Sam Beckett knew all too well, was a very funny thing. Yet conversely, it also contained some very predictable patterns. Some could even be called redundant.

"I was being beaten. I was always being beaten, punched, dunked, or some combination of the three when a leap first occurred. I only wish that the entire purpose of the leaps were to stop or prevent these beatings. But this violence always proves symptomatic. It's part of the price I pay for an arguably successful experiment. My scientist's training never prepared me for dealing with these kinds of people. Luckily my Tae Kwon Do training did.

I laugh when I think that it took becoming a mother to remember I had it. I stop laughing very quickly when I realize that I don't always remember past leaps, let alone my own past. Still, Swiss-cheesed memories or no, my martial arts skills always prove perfect for dealing with these *nozzles* as Al would call them."

"Learning Tae Kwon Do was part of rage management over my brother's death-No, wait-Tom's alive, and Dad, he lived until six months before I leaped, and Sis-her name?-is mayor of our little town back in Indiana. Damn! I still actually have to remind myself of the name Sam Beckett on occasion. The ironic part is, I can actually remember this *leapee's* memories better than some of my own. I-He was half-dead on a broken tarmac, when a beautiful woman spirited me away for recovery, where I-he-resumed a life on the run-from-what? A huge, ugly giant appears in my mind, and seems as close as my own breath, like anger wearing humanoid form-only-he's not all there. Weird. As I send the bullying jerks on their way, I remember why I learned the martial arts-it was for rage management. But not my own rage. A friend of mine, a biophysicist whose work was pivotal in making these leaps physically survivable, was so tortured by his wife's accidental death that it strangled his soul. Grief left him a recluse. I was frightened by it. Wanted to know how to rein it in after Donna left me-No wait, Donna -Donna-well, she didn't leave, I know that. There was an old man, my martial arts sensei Li Sung. He would've known how to cope with all this. Blind, but with eyes that could see the whole world. A master who knew his Tao as well as his sidestep."

"My friend never took those classes along with me and so missed that joyous old man's teachings, as valuable in physics as in a street fight. Yet did this man I've leaped into come to know Sensei later on? I feel he did. Synchronicity. I feel heartened by this. Sensei Li Sung, that old friend I failed to help, and that book had meant so much to me. All three played roles in what my life was to become, for good or ill. I can't remember their names, but I remember that book. *With One Arm At My Throat* by Richard Kimble. That, and *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance* had been required reading for young physicists at the Institute. Even D-Dennis-Daniel? had loved Kimble's book, and after his wife's death, he could be humorless. Then I remembered-not my friend's name-but how he died, back in 77'. I attended his funeral-his and-Doctor Elena Marks-that's a breakthrough, of sorts, and it was said that a hulking green creature was seen leaving the scene of the fire that caused their deaths. A creature that looks exactly like the one in this guy's mind. In my mind, now. My pulse is racing, without my knowing why. This is absurd, I have control. Maybe not over my when or where, but I have this much control. Just–just not now."

There had been a recent rain, and so the traveler through time looked into a puddle, made reflective by the sunlight that always came back stronger than any downpour. As he expected, he faced a mirror image that was not his own. The man's features were familiar, but Beckett felt a lot like this was a face he couldn't possibly be seeing. The dates he had glimpsed in the other's mind spoke of the 1990's, almost his own time.

"David?"

This face, he almost knew, was not one that should be around, even in the 80's. But that oddity was lost quickly as Sam saw that the man's eyes were badly dilated, looking both white and green as the feelings of helpless despair overwhelmed him. This rage did not care how much control the leaper had. It was going to come out, and his face was showing it. Sam saw his hands growing larger, and began to lose not merely consciousness, but himself. He managed to utter familiar words before he lost all coherence.

"Oh, Boy!"

A few moments later, it could truly be said that Sam Beckett was no longer there.

AN EVER-CHANGING FUTURE

STALLION'S GATE, NEW MEXICO

Gooshie stared in horror at the readout.

"We've lost Doctor Beckett."

Al Calavicci shook his head.

"Goosh, don't you mean that you just don't have an exact lock on his where and when-abouts?"

"No, Admiral. I mean he's just nowhere to be found. I even scanned back into Elvis Presley's lifetime, to see if he went ahead in it, like he did with Oswald. No go. Admiral, Doctor Beckett has left the time stream."

Despite his promise to Beth and the girls, Al pulled out his cigar, lit and puffed on it. His nerves had just gone into overdrive.

"Ziggy? Clue me in, here. Wouldn't basic conservation of matter and energy mean that, even if Sam were dead or destroyed, we'd pick up something?"

The device that had redefined the term 'super-computer' a dozen times over responded in its usual manner.

"To truly clue you in would drain even my considerable resources, Admiral. But in this you are correct. Doctor Beckett should be there, even if our capacity to lock onto him is in question. No matter his condition, the evolution of our ability to find his basic presence is no longer in doubt. So I do not believe he has been destroyed. Rather, I look to the corollary of the laws you truncated in your quote. Energy/matter may be neither created nor destroyed. Yet it can be changed."

Al rolled his eyes and put his cigar aside. There wasn't enough good tobacco in the world to help him deal with Ziggy.

"Sam is always changing. When he leaped into that pregnant girl, he underwent a hysterical pregnancy, even though guys aren't designed that way."

"Oddly, Admiral, you may in fact be on the right track. But I believe that Doctor Beckett's current change may exceed mere sympathetic physical reactions."

Al nodded.

"So what happened to him?"

"Admiral, I project a ninety-five percent probability that Doctor Beckett has suffered a perhaps catastrophic mutation, altering his body chemistry. I suggest you risk engaging the party Doctor Beckett has leaped into."

Al looked at the waiting area doors, now triple-reinforced after a spree killer Sam had leaped into escaped the project, nearly causing untold disasters.

"That, Zig, is a risk I'd prefer not to take, even for Sam."

For Sam Beckett, Al would literally do anything. The young scientist had saved his marriage back in the late 70's, when post-traumatic stress disorder had rendered Calavicci a nearly-worthless drunk, one even Beth was preparing to give up on. He was a man dwelling in a nightmare, and having even worse ones, ones in which Beth did not wait for him to come home from his captivity in North Vietnam, and Al had become a loser with a succession of bad marriages. Sam Beckett had never given up on him, even choosing to help his new friend Al over his old friend, a widower scientist who had become a recluse.

"But since it is for Sam, my preferences mean exactly jack squat."

Before Al could request entry, yells came from inside the waiting area.

"Beeksy? Who do we have guarding the leapee?"

Doctor Verbena Beeks had been preparing to enter the area herself, to begin some limited questioning of the new arrival. As Al was for the escaped spree-killer, so was she for a thankfully short-term 'leapee' who had taken one look at her, and then asked in a dismissive voice whether Beeks was the facility's maid. History contained some things she wished Sam Beckett could wipe out forever.

"It's Officer Talbot, Al."

Al felt his nerves start again.

"That nozzle? Wasn't he suspended?"

She sighed.

"His lawyer has that under review."

Al's eyes went wide.

"We're a top-secret facility! How can we not have the ability to hire and fire who we want?"

The yells became louder.

"I SAID SIT DOWN! You want some more of this nightstick? You–you crushed it?"

Talbot ran out at lightning speed, and this time no lawyer could save his job.

"The guy's nuts! Completely nuts!"

Al sneered at the guard, cowering in the corner, while he acted to prevent another escape.

"Well, he's also not getting out. I just secured the three doors by remote. They're magna-locked, and made of solid..."

A series of crashes from within the waiting area contraindicated whatever Al was about to say. For the man inside had somehow proven more solid. If in fact it was a man.

"Ziggy! Pull your vitals down behind the disaster shields. Do it now!"

"Done, Admiral."

Certain components were recessed, others closed over, and the accelerator sank into the ground below, to theoretically secure quarters. That theory would now be put to the test. Despite all logic, the third and final door leading out from the waiting area broke open and nearly went off its hinges. Al saw a dark-haired, middle-aged man of average build emerge. Everyone else of course, saw Sam Beckett. But one and all saw the man's face contorted in open rage, and all heard him roar like a wild animal unseen since the Earth was new. Al gulped to see the heavy door now fly away entirely, like a porch's screen door during a July 4th gone wild. Ziggy's slightly muffled voice gave off a reading that would only be useful later.

"Admiral, this individual is causing a gamma radiation spike that is non-lethal, but verifiable."

Like many another time, Al prepped himself for quite literally whatever.

"Sam? What the hell did you get us into?"


	2. Chapter One All The Rage

Chapter One - All The Rage

The creature was driven by rage. Al Calavicci needed no one to tell him this. Nor did he need anyone to bring up that statement's obvious corollary: Things were all kaka. While crouched in a barely safe corner of the main project area, he prayed to God above that the rifle he hurriedly loaded with a tranquilizer dart would do the trick.

"If you don't take him out, baby, then we got nothing. Nothing at all."

To most on the staff, the howling, incoherent, perhaps even psychotic thing wore Sam Beckett's face. To Al, it appeared as another man, one who looked familiar. Perhaps he could have placed the man's face, given time and clarity. But until the lunatic, smashing and growling with arms extended in what looked like an absurd flexing motion, was taken down, they were out of time and short on clear thinking.

"Tina! Make very damned sure everyone is clear when I make this shot. I hadda load the contents of five tranq-darts into this one!"

The underrated woman who both respected and regretted Al's devotion to Beth did as she was asked. Dr. Beeks was abnormally shaken by what she saw, and poor Gooshie seemed a few grades above catatonic. For his own part, Al felt twinges of feelings that hadn't resurfaced since his regression therapy over his time as a prisoner in North Vietnam. But far from making him helpless, these reminders only served to make Al want to bring the psycho down all the more.

"Just turn your back to me, nut-burger. Just let me plant this beauty straight in your spinal column."

It was a sword that cut both ways. Sam leaping into a paraplegic didn't cost him his legs, and a psycho leaping into Sam did not become a rational, loving genius. Like a pencil in the water, time bent the leapee's image to look like Sam's, but the same person remained underneath, presuming this attacker was a person. Surveying the damage, Al thought Sam must have leaped into a particularly nasty asylum for the criminally insane. Ziggy and the Accelerator were safe, but a lot of equipment had not been so lucky, and while Al didn't know what all of it did, at least some of it looked hard to replace.

"There you are, pal. Yeah, that's it. Just flex, and leave yourself wide open for...Donna?!"

Doctor Donna Eleese-Beckett was an anomaly in Al's eyes. There was sometimes the oddest feeling that she hadn't always been there, when of course she always had. Al and Beth had returned Sam's favor and gotten the nervous bride to the church on time. A quick visit to the grave of the father she had barely reconciled with before his loss had done the trick.

"Donna, you're blocking my clear shot."

"Forget it, Al. This is Sam's image destroying Sam's work. I won't allow any further violation of either one."

The only thing more insane than Donna attempting to talk the psycho down was the fact that he-it?-seemed to be responding. Like a simian fascinated by a new and unexpected thing, the eyes of the Sam-alike followed Donna's upraised arms and seemed entranced by her even tones.

"That's it. We're not your enemies. There's nothing and no one here to harm you. There's no one that wants to."

"Speak for yourself, Doctor."

Al was not relaxing his sniper's stance. What Donna was doing was stupid, and oh-so typically do-gooder. She was Sam's perfect match, no doubt. He damned her for her foolish risk, as he sometimes damned her for her perfect tolerance of Sam's Swiss-Cheesed affairs of the Leap. No one was that good and pure. No one cried while watching the award-winning documentaries made by the psychic reporter who may have been Sam's other great love. No one treated Doctor Sammy Jo Fuller like a long-lost sister, knowing what they knew about who her father was.

"No one else."

He also damned her for the fact that he loved her almost as much as he loved Sam. The authority the often-arrogant Ziggy tried to assert sometimes just naturally flowed to the founders of the project. If their word and their desires weren't law, they were the next best thing. Yet seeing Donna in such obvious peril reminded Al of old idle fantasies in which a well-placed CIA agent took out Ho Chi Minh in the mid-1950s.

"Just lie back. We are your friends."

Al nearly dropped his rifle when he saw the man, who to everyone but himself was Sam's mirror image, sit down against the wall as though exhausted. Just as astonishingly, Donna took and squeezed his hand. It was then that Admiral Calavicci remembered an important, often forgotten fact about Ho Chi Minh. In his early days, he had actually sought America as an ally. If the label he had worn had not been socialist or communist, how different could history have been?

"No, wait...I promise I'll be back."

Donna pulled her hand away in time, just as the perhaps hopelessly confused lunatic rose up yet again. She backed away and fell down, though not hard enough to injure her, so far as could be seen. This was just enough for Al to do what he had to. The world was not a nice neat place, and sometimes the labels were there for a very damned good reason. The dart struck near the attacker's spine, both insuring that he could not pull it out and that it would be delivered quickly to the brain, that, as Jim Morrison so aptly put it, must have been squirming like a toad. Just not any more. Despite Vietnam, not to mention having watched the entire run of Friday The 13th films with his girls, Al did what he called 'the big stupid' and kicked the fallen man. He did not move or stir. Al thanked God again, this time that adrenalin had a down side once fully spent.

"Everyone take a hand in moving him back to the waiting area. I know he looks like Sam, but put that out of your minds and I mean way the hell out!"

Gooshie pointed at the now-still escapee as Tina helped a flustered Donna up and to a chair. She seemed chastened by the near-miss, enough so that Al let any choice words he had for his best friend's wife slip by. All along, Al had seen the dark-haired man as he was, though there was still a twist awaiting him even in that. Now though, Al was no longer alone in seeing the leapee in his true aspect and likeness.

"Hey, Admiral? Why is he changing from being Doctor Beckett?"

"Geez. Goosh, describe him to me."

He did, then so did Dr. Beeks, Tina, and a pair of security guards who, unlike Talbot, were not on their way out. One and all, they told Al of watching Sam Beckett's image shimmer and fade suddenly, to be slowly replaced by the face and form of the man Al had seen all along.

"But I'm the only one who can see him for who he is. And that's only because I trans-leaped with Sam that one time."

While various minds began to ponder this supposed impossibility, one of their very best gasped so loudly, it was nearly a scream. Donna Eleese-Beckett had looked at the morphed escapee, and then she looked quite pale. Verbena Beeks tried to calm her.

"Donna? You look like you just saw a ghost."

Donna nodded, pointing at the unconscious man being led away back to the waiting area.

"Him. Didn't we establish his basic era of extraction as the late 80's to the very early 90's?"

Al nodded. Experience had allowed Ziggy to gain broad information just from the initial scans, although nailing down specifics still meant physically talking with Sam and his counterpart.

"Somewhere in that area. Why?"

Donna just shook her head. The impossible was at violent war with the merely improbable.

"Then we're all seeing a ghost. Al, I know that man. His name is Doctor David Bruce Banner. He was one of my college instructors. I say was, because David Banner died in 1977!"

Now it was Al's turn to gasp. He now knew from where he knew this man. He also knew that, had things gone differently, the man he had taken down could have easily been the one holding the hand link, the lifeline of the leaper. He said a few whispered words.

"It had to be you, didn't it Banner?"

----

AUGUST 15TH, 1991

The hell had passed. Sam Beckett now walked the Earth once again. But the pain in his body raised the obvious question. Where had he been, and who had sent him away? The rage he had previously felt was not the filthy, soot-like, lung-choking rage of people like the hateful Oswald. Yet though it had been cleaner, it had still been enough to displace Sam without a fight, and apparently to ruin his wardrobe. Previous leaps had shown him certain patterns. When he was disheveled, alone and without his own bearings or Al to guide him, there were three types of people that quickly found him. They were the very helpful, the very bad, and the law.

"Hey, you! Freeze."

Bingo-bango-bongo, as Al would doubtless say, were he there. Were policemen drawn to time travelers, Sam wondered? All he had to do was sport so much as a missing button and they arrived from miles around. At least in those leaps he could remember.

"Boy, that wildman tagged you good, didn't he?"

Sam sighed in happy appreciation. This man was a professional. His look was one of concern.

"Yeah, I guess he did. I think I still have my money, Officer. Your town have a thrift shop?"

In fact, Deputy Richard Ayers did better than that, securing Sam some cheap clothes and shoes, not to mention coffee and a sandwich, all in exchange for a promise not to loiter. It was a promise Sam was more than happy to keep. For in the ruined pockets of his leapee's pants, he found a scrawled set of words. They contained the name of a town, a town that was the unknown man's destination. It was in many respects also Sam's ultimate destination.

"Stallion's Gate, New Mexico."

In hours, he had, despite the heat, moved across the state border into New Mexico. Only when resting did he realize that his disorientation and general rush had somehow precluded him from again looking at the mirrored face he now wore. But he had seen it when he first arrived, so he tried to envision it. This proved easier to do than he would have thought, and he just as easily attached a name to that face.

"David Banner?"

Before his brain had the wherewithal to process this impossibility, Sam felt not rage but panic. It was a reminder from the visiting part of his Swiss-cheesed memories that, whenever his rage was released, he must move even at night or even during the day in the desert.

"The wildman. The giant. The green, hulking giant."

Sam got up and started walking again. For when the giant appeared, so did the reporter. He was pursued by an investigative reporter.

"Mister McGee, don't make me angry."

McGee. Jack McGee. Sam knew that name from his own life, though just where it came into play was not for him to recall just then. But one thing he did know, though not from his own life, was why the reporter was after him. Jack McGee knew a secret. Not the biggest secret, but one that was big enough.

"He knows it's me. He knows that I–that I am the creature. That I turn into the creature."

No. David Banner, somehow alive fourteen years after his funeral, turned into the creature. Sam didn't. Sam Beckett didn't turn into the monster, what McGee called The Hulk. Except that now he did. Having leaped into his old friend, Sam now also shared his curse.

"Just what the hell did you get us into, David?"


	3. Chapter Two Driven By An Unknown Force

Chapter Two - Driven By An Unknown Force

A preternaturally smug voice spoke with pronounced impatience to Al Calavicci.

"Admiral, our visitor took out some portion of my electronic eyes and ears around the project. A full report on what has happened, then and after would be appreciated. Now!"

If some at the project were in awe of the hybrid supercomputer and its capabilities, Al was not among them.

"Well, well. You mean to say that the *being* who once shut us down in a snit over being held accountable needs a primate like me? Ziggy, we are trying our best. You know damned well hooking your sensors and such back up doesn't just mean new equipment. It means deep programming skills. Gooshie and Tina are going all-out, and so are their assistants. Give it time. Give it time, because for once, you don't have any choice in the matter."

There was a short tense silence, but no new shutdowns occurred. Al knew how to stare down just about anyone, even if they didn't technically have eyeballs.

"There is no need to threaten me, Admiral. But I am a computer, and no computer or sentient individual can operate without necessary information."

"I gotcha, Zig. But this guy took us completely by surprise. He broke past all the precautions we set up, like they were nothing. So until we get our sea legs back, let's go with what you do have. Did you scan this loony before he damaged some of your replaceable sensors?"

"Of course, Admiral. The results of those scans were very odd."

Al looked over at Gooshie. A frown on his face told Calavicci that the repair and recovery work was far from over.

"Oh? I would have thought they'd be standard for somebody that far off their kilter."

A sound of crunching glass being swept up nearly made Al jump before Ziggy made its reply.

"His adrenal glands were operating at levels massively toxic to most humans, Admiral. Yet that, in and of itself, is not remarkable for one in an enhanced frenzy or psychotic state. No, the anomaly I speak of comes from our attacker's apparent size shift."

Al tried to reason this one out, but could not.

"Well, when he appeared to be Sam, he was looking a bit taller. I still have no clue as to how Banner changed so that everyone, not just me, can see him as himself. Ziggy, how does a difference of an inch or three in height grab your attention?"

"Admiral, even damaged, my scanners and sensor arrays see far more than any set of human eyes ever could. In short, I saw beyond the attacker's temporal appearance as Doctor Beckett."

Al decided that he did not like where this was headed, even if he had only the vaguest idea of where that was.

"You're saying that even before he changed from Sam to Banner, he had a third form?"

"Very astute, Admiral. In fact, my heat-scans of Doctor Banner as he emerged speak of a man not nearly six feet in height, but over seven. Also, his weight at that time was not the roughly two-hundred pounds it is at present, but at least two times that amount."

"Geez. Guess I'd be upset too, if I were that chubby."

"No, Admiral. The form I scanned was of proper frame for a man of only two-hundred-fifty pounds. I must surmise that the extra weight resided in his musculature and skeletal structure."

Al had some scientific training, and had picked up more by osmosis over the years. None of it helped him right then.

"So when he went on a tear, Banner had the density of a steel block, but in the frame of a decent bodybuilder. But he doesn't weigh a quarter ton right now. The guards moved him with no sweat. Ziggy, mass like that doesn't just vanish."

Had he not been so upset by the attack, Al would have noticed how this was the very best he and the computer had ever gotten along.

"I have any number of working theories, Admiral. Perhaps that mass is extra-dimensionally stored. Perhaps an unknown bodily fluid is released during the transformation, containing the genetic programming necessary for the mass to emerge. Yet none of that helps us in our greatest dilemma."

"Give it to me straight, Zig. Cause it can't be any worse than what we just faced."

"You are wrong, Admiral. My dilemma is a hideous one, for I can at present calculate no reason for this leap to have occurred."

Al had that queasy feeling again.

"You mean you haven't nailed it down. You mean you're running through the maybes, the what-ifs and the could-have-beens. Right?"

Ziggy's silence kept on for fifteen minutes, prompting Al to quote his very best friend.

"Oh, Boy."

After Al had finally entered the imaging chamber, Donna took an enormous chance. The guards were firmly told to go away. Doctor Beeks moved to revive the freed sleeper. He looked about him, almost lemur-like in his furtiveness.

"Where am I?"

"Are you David Banner?"

The revived man seemed to be mentally ticking off alternatives to what he finally yielded.

"Yes. Now where am I?"

"David, do you recognize me?"

A small smile emerged on his face.

"Donna Eleece? Donna, my God! Is Sam here?"

Donna pointed out at the wreckage David's creature had caused.

"I'll gladly explain where Sam is, David. He's why you're here, and right now, he needs your help as much as you need his."

David didn't outwardly wince, to see what the Hulk had done. It had happened too often. It was one of a sequence of events that now seemed all too familiar. As did what followed next.

"Donna, put me to work."

--------

August, 1991

"I've got to fight it. Damn you, David. It feels like I've been fighting your rage my entire life."

Stallion's Gate was closer, though exactly how close Sam Beckett could not say. For then and there, though, he unsuccessfully wrestled with the urge to dwell on those leaps he could recall that had been very close and sometimes very harsh. Having learned from dealing with the unseen Al not to be seen talking to himself, even in an isolated place, he resumed his internal monologue.

"I've had bad leaps. I've watched a rapist walk out of court, laughing. I saw a bitter ex-girlfriend set up a war bride to be slaughtered by an insane pitcher. I've heard the uncaring voice of a rural, sweet-talking drug dealer as she pulled a gun on an innocent child as though he were a bug to be squashed. I've felt the cold touch of the void as my best friend was reduced to a memory that only a cigar wrapping could save from total oblivion. And to top it all off, I have this odd feeling about my old girlfriend, Donna Eleese. I know I helped her reconcile with her father. So why do I feel this massive dread that somehow I have repeatedly betrayed her? I need my lifeline. I need Al, to come here and tell me why my life and David's have intersected yet again. But where is he?"

"Sam."

Sam turned and saw Al, preparing to buzz him with the questions that always came when a leap was new. But both men looked puzzled and dumbstruck as Al's image began to fade.

"Sam! Sam, hang on..."

Sam was nearly all alone again, and felt mental steel clamp down on the anger and the rage, both that which was his own and that which was like a foreign barbarian invading his very heart. A desperate option left his mouth.

"Al, I can't hang on much longer. Talk to David, and tell him everything. He can help, if you just let him."

Al's face looked absolutely thunderstruck, both by his situation and by the suggestion Sam made about Banner. But before he could object, he was in the projection chamber, and Sam was gone. He cried out.

-----

THE PROJECT

"Gooshie! Just what the hell happened there?"

The nervous man raised his arms to calm the project observer.

"Admiral, we have good news and we have bad news. The good news is, David's attack didn't damage any components containing Ziggy's main program."

Al noticed the 'David' right away, but let it go for the moment.

"The bad news?"

"We speculate that, because of his current mutation, Doctor Beckett's brain-waves are moving out of the sync you and he have established over the past four years. Very soon, you may not be able to use the chamber to communicate with him ever again."

Al bit down.

"You mean until this leap is over, right?"

Gooshie shrugged.

"We're working on finding that out."

Al walked off as he finished their short talk.

"Work harder."

Al proceeded to the waiting area, and nearly fell over when he did not see a sedated David Banner under guard. Marching out, he instead saw Banner typing busily away at a terminal in the cubicle island used by the project's keypunchers and line-writers. Sam's instructions fell out of his memory, and Al drew his gun, close enough to both gain Banner's notice and to take him out before any mutation could take hold.

"What's the matter, you haven't done enough damage? Now, step away from the terminal, and don't change a hair for me."

Al cocked the pistol.

"Not if you care for me."

David Banner did not flinch. Over the years, he had replayed this scenario an absurd amount of times. He spoke two words.

"Don't miss."


	4. Chapter Three The Book Of David

Chapter Three - The Book Of David

Al hated the calm way Banner kept at the terminal's keyboard, looking not one whit like a man with a gun pointed at his head. Part of Al wanted to choke that calm out of him. Happily for all concerned, the same part of Admiral Calavicci's brain that kept him from rushing a sniper's position back in the day reminded him why this was not an option.

"Help me out, here. Just what part of *get away from the terminal* failed to catch on with you?"

David Banner apparently finished his keystroke-flurry, hit enter and looked up at his best student's best friend.

"Admiral, do you know what's highly likely to happen if you don't put that weapon away?"

Al drew the gun closer to Banner, though not close enough for the target to make an easy grab for it.

"It just so happens that I do, Doc. Most of the scenarios end with your neck going all stumpy."

The calm on Banner's face and in his body language remained without effort. Al was still certain that it was an enforced calm, and it almost inspired respect for the scientist. But only almost.

"That's not how I see it, Admiral. What I see as likely to happen is that you will attempt to fire, but your hand will be grabbed at the last minute. As you and this other person struggle, I'll decide to get up. The gun will go off. I will be struck in a non-lethal area. But even a glancing bullet wound hurts like very few people can imagine. Even a grazing is more pain than most people will ever likely encounter, and I should know. The worst part is, even a grazing could cause me to trip and hit my head, or aggravate the wound."

Al clicked the safety, but did not put the gun away. He stared at Banner.

"Then you change, right? Sounds like you've been in this spot before."

David stood up, making a deliberate show of where his hands were, and walked around to a point nearer to Al. But his next words were not for the Admiral.

"Doctor Martinez? Tell Doctor Gooshberg that I've managed to restore the main program for Ziggy's audio sensor inputs. They use up more memory than the video feeds, though. So the rest may be a while."

Tina responded in a voice of clear deference usually given only to Donna and one obvious other.

"Thanks, David. Ziggy was moaning more about the audio, anyway."

Al didn't hold back a response this time.

"She called you David. So did Gooshie. Donna already knows you, but you can't have been everybody's student teacher. So why are you everybody's instant best friend?"

"You mean, especially after tearing up the place as The Hulk?"

So the creature had a name, Al thought. One straight out of Beth's aunt's tabloids.

"I considered that to be kinda-sorta implicit."

David pulled his chair around, and Al did the same, but his gun never left either of their sights as they sat down.

"Admiral, I'm going to guess that you're a man who isn't fond of partial explanations. And if all I do is explain that aspect of my existence, I don't see that helping either of us."

Al saw the technique for what it was, and it, like the man speaking, was utterly brilliant. When there was no point in obfuscating or shading things, just give with the whole story. This was surely part of how Banner had gone from sedated prisoner to volunteer worker in a few short hours. While this didn't necessarily make Al trust David any better, it was at least a welcome change from the hunt-and-peck he usually had to play with a leapee. Without realizing it, Al pointed using the safety-locked gun.

"You wanna give me the whole enchilada, Banner? Then I'm the man with the appetite for it. And don't skimp on the sour cream."

Just as David was set to begin, a hand reached for Al's weapon.

"Al, put that damned thing away!"

David looked on in absolute horror as his prediction seemed set to come to pass.

"Donna, No!"

------

1991, New Mexico

Sam of course did not keep on straight down the highway. If he even heard or saw a car coming in the distance, he hid. There was the police to consider. He remembered vividly once being offered a ride by cops who offered coffee and sandwiches. They then turned and used him in a frame on the local sheriff's wife, whose honest lawman husband the corrupt deputies had recently murdered.

"Stop. That never happened to me."

Not that it seemed vastly dissimilar to events he had seen in his leaps. Yet though the images played out in his head, a bit of concentration made him see at last that this was David Banner's memory.

"This isn't Swiss Cheese. This is Alpine Lace."

Of course, this had happened before, and was constantly happening in every leap. It wasn't always a bad thing, Oswald aside. But rarely had anyone's memories dovetailed with his own so neatly.

"Then again, David is one of my few intellectual peers."

While the out-loud thought was accurate, Sam could also tell that this was not the reason for the flowing together of the memories. In part, this was because the reason required bewilderingly simple reasoning, such as neither scientist was truly known for. A passing truck also had him in hiding as one set of memories faded. He saw his beloved sensei, who had been hiding in a truck's trailer, nearly freeze to death as an atypically vicious trucker laughed his head off.

"No. No. That's David again. David, how could you know a man like sensei and not have gained control over your curse?"

David Banner had known Li Sung. But he, sadly, was also gone now. Sam remembered weeping over his corpse, his essence at last no longer able to make his frail body keep on. Then he had joined with the great teacher's last student, a police officer whose tae-kwan-do was ten times Sam's own. Together, they had cleared out the officer's corrupt cohorts.

"No. I didn't. I changed into The Hulk. Then Al showed up, telling me I had to clear out. NO! That's not what happened. It never happened. Not to me."

Sam was having more and more trouble filtering out all David had been through, so similar to events Sam had seen and lived. So much so he almost didn't hear a car approach. He hid again, but this time the driver had at least seen that there was a wandering man on the road. Sam heard the car stop, and a voice came through, all too clearly.

"John? John, is that you? John, why don't you at long last stop this running? I can get you help. John, I know the Hulk appeared, about a hundred miles back. And if you're traveling down this road, then I will eventually see you again. The only thing in this direction is some government boondoggle in a dust mote called Stallion's Gate. Everything else is desert, and I wouldn't even wish that on the Hulk. I'm going, John. But on occasion, I'll be turning round again on this road, and I'll monitor police broadcasts. It's not too late, John. You can answer for your crimes. You can make it right once again."

The car sped off, but still in hiding, Sam had no more doubt of the driver's sincerity in his vows than he had of the driver's identity.

"Jack McGee."

----

THE NEAR FUTURE, STALLION'S GATE

To Al's surprise, David rose and put his hands gently over Donna's as she continued to try and wrest the gun away.

"Donna? Do you trust Al?"

Al nearly let go a very impressed 'damn'. David's method was really starting to impress him, issues of trust aside.

"Of course I do. But he always reacts this way, and I won't have a gun aimed at your head, David. We're going to help you, this time."

Her hands were taken off the gun, which Al then put away. But his eyes were still on Banner, handling Donna and all the others the way he had only ever seen one other person manage it. That person had created Quantum Leap.

"Donna, wasn't the damage I caused when I was transformed the entire reason you put me to work out here?"

His words were starkly shaded, leaving no wiggle-room whatsoever for Donna. Al was glad for that. She wasn't a knee-jerk anything, but she was an inherent do-gooder, by choice, heritage and marriage. She had to be convinced of the truth by showing that there was no other option available.

"Well, yes. It seemed foolish to keep one of the best physicists on the planet under sedation when he could be contributing."

Al turned away and groaned. Suddenly he was very glad that Sam hadn't leaped into a Hannibal Lecter-type, thus necessitating the use of a psychiatrist. Donna's logic would have them all in the stew-pot.

"Donna, didn't you tell me that Al often acts as a defacto head of security for the project?"

Doctor Eleese turned and looked at Calavicci, reminding him of why he stuck by these airheaded eggheads. It was love, pure and simple. The love that had, in just about every history imaginable, saved him from the abyss.

"Al's just about defacto everything."

David finished up, stopping well short of 'playing' Donna, which would have insulted both her and Al's intelligence.

"Then let him do threat assessment. Let him learn why he might want to trust the man who nearly tore Sam's dream to pieces. Alright?"

There was, of course, a light hug between the two, followed by a pair of pretty eyes warning Al that the weapon had perhaps better stay put away. It hardly bothered Al that their interactions were so family-like. What did bother him was the effortless way Banner had become a part of the family, as though he had always been. No. Because he *had* always been. When she had left, David seemed to have perhaps picked up on Al's unease, for he addressed some part of it first of all.

"She lost her father about the same time as I lost Laura, my first wife. Sam asked her to look after the professor who was starting to look more disheveled than some of the students. If not for those two, I would have withdrawn even further inside myself than I did."

A concept Al more than understood. So he bypassed that part of it for now.

"That explains her. What about everyone else?"

Banner looked hesitant. What followed was a fact he was not very proud of.

"I often used Doctor Kimble's book on his time as a fugitive, in order to get by. However, I also discovered that, with the Hulk involved, the techniques he described were just not enough. So I found a book by a couple of psychologists I'd known, Doctors Sidney Freedman and Robert Hartley. It was called 'The Isotopic Man'."

Not for the last time this leap, Al's jaw dropped.

"But that's a book on serial killers!"

David nodded.

"More specifically, it's a book that purports to tell why monsters can hide among us and remain unnoticed for so long. The killers in effect make themselves more normal than normal. Just as Uranium 238 is still uranium, despite its extra-lethal rad levels, so does the killer appear to be just another person. They are often charming. They avoid fights. They try and avoid any notice. They let themselves be seen as easy marks, or 'chumps', taking overtime when no one else will, being overly helpful without the attendant self-promotion that usually accompanies so-called 'brown nosing'. In short, they do everything to blend in better than those who simply blend in. They are seen just enough to be more invisible than those society merely ignores."

David Banner was either the world's foremost expert on survival or the most dangerous man in the world, Al decided. So he decided to concentrate on the more obvious danger the man presented.

"I'll show you mine, Doc. You tell me about the Hulk, and I'll fill in what Donna didn't about the project."

----

AUGUST, 1991

Sam Beckett was not a man subject to nightmares. Too much of his life had the aspects of a dream state for his subconscious to recycle its contents in quite that way. It also followed that, like most of us, he was not a man who had to worry about the few nightmares he remembered, with the exception of one that involved Maine and the youthful version of a famous author. After all, even that author was apt to point out that stories were only stories, and nightmares were only nightmares.

Except now Sam was having a series of nightmares that Stevie King would have relished writing down. And what better King-like twist than to have a man ripped apart inside by nightmares that weren't even his own?

He saw his mother die, and she had died because he wasn't strong enough to make his father take her to see the doctor.

He saw his first wife Laura die because he wasn't strong enough to open a car door jammed by an accident.

"Stop. Laura Banner was a beautiful person, but she was not my wife. David, I'm not letting you do this to me."

He saw Elaina Marks die, because he could not effectively use the strength he now at last possessed.

He saw his second wife die, because he could not give her dying cells the useless strength that had become his curse.

"I have no...second...wife. No second wife."

He saw his sister Helen die, shot while on another visit. A group proclaiming her work sacrilegious paid the price for their terror. But he himself had sat back and let her die, unable to donate blood that could kill her or worse, make her like him. So it was that he couldn't even give his sister the strength he was born with.

"No! My sister's name is Katie, and she is very much alive."

Sam at last saw an oddity he could not understand. David's lover, the spy and thief known as Jasmine, was kicking and taunting him on a tarmac as he lay dying from a fall that by rights, should never have affected him. She was trying to save her man by initiating the change. In a hideous instant, she succeeded. But as the creature rose, it lashed out at Jasmine, smashing her into a wall. Another death on his soul's ledger, he thought. But quite miraculously, she revived, shaking off death like it was a bad cold. She also shook off the programming and brainwashing of her former employers, including the woman who had claimed to be her sister. She said that her true name was--Mandy?--no, Amanda. Her miracle she did not explain, except to say that she really was a thief, and would now resume her life, seeking out an old friend named Duncan to help this along. She kissed him and was gone quickly after that.

"People who don't die? A leap---I remember lightning. No. No time for that."

Sam then regained reality and saw the true horror of David Banner's life. It was the road ahead. The road that could by definition never include a place called home. This was the fault, mainly, not of a monster, but of a man. A man, who, like Sam himself, had rushed an experiment based on an urgency that no longer seemed even partway relevant.

"Al, where are you? You're my angel in all this, Al. I need my angel. My link back home. Because I can't travel another step. Not alone."

Sam was three hours in deep meditation, and through every second, he felt the rising, lonely rage of the creature that now dwelled within him.

------

PROJECT QUANTUM LEAP

David Banner was still at a familiar point in the story of his downfall, or at least it was one that Al already knew of.

"I was angry at the world. As it had taken my mother in the past, and as it would take my sister in the future, it had taken Laura from me. The nightmares about the car accident wouldn't let me sleep properly. Later on, I would become withdrawn. For then though, I only became bitter."

Al understood this as well.

"After I got out of the Hanoi Hilton--how it happened is major league classified--I was the same way. I blamed the student creeps for not supporting us. I blamed the military for giving us so damned little in the way of support, after it was done. I blamed the people who *supported* the war, for letting our leaders think it was all still good. If not for Beth and NASA, those first months back would have eaten me alive."

Oddly, David chuckled.

"I remember a speech you gave from orbit, blasting Congress for its cutbacks in the space program. It probably connected with me because you just sounded so indignant. The problem is, I let my rage eat me alive. I had just finished my second doctorate when it all caught up with me. A student, likely the best I would ever have, turned in a paper that I practically threw back in his face. It was full of what I saw as naive, overly optimistic, unsupported assumptions about the universe tacked on to some very fuzzy thinking about how one of its major laws might be circumvented. The paper asserted essentially that a well-known irresistible force could be countered by its own energies."

Al held up an opened hand.

"Hey, Doc? It doesn't take a Sam Beckett to see that's who you're talking about. I mean, you all but sketched a thumbnail portrait of him."

"I guess I did. That weekend after our shouting match--I didn't even realize Sam knew how to yell-- his words kept repeating in my ears, and in my head. In my dreams, I didn't see Laura and the car. I saw endless pieces of string, all bound together--until they formed a double helix."

"DNA. You saw that what you were looking for was locked up inside us."

David's face seemed to light up.

"Yes. I realized then that there was no way I could have saved Laura. No human being of normal physical strength possibly could have. I also thought about Sam's assertion that we should not be limited to the one sliver of time we presently inhabit. He said that we should have access to our entire lifetimes. I still didn't believe that, but his words reminded me of an old truism. We humans only use from five to ten percent of our full capabilities, mentally and physically. My new hope was that, by way of manipulating our DNA and body chemistry, I could give human beings access to that full range of untapped power."

Al now seemed a little less impressed.

"My DI back in boot would have said that maybe you wanna leave that untapped part still untapped, so's later on you can tap into it when you have to."

Yet Banner, now seemingly part evangelist, would not be put off.

"But don't you see? Imagine being able to pull up that full range at a moment's notice. The worst of illnesses, shrugged off with a week's bed rest. The biggest dilemmas, solved within a year of seeking a solution. Lives lived without a random fear of half the possible events that might occur. Strength that could be called up without the side effects of adrenalin or anabolic steroids."

Al set a trap for the now gung-ho scientist.

"In other words, people would only die when they were insanely way old or when a really bad instant death-type accident hit them. Tell me, Doc, am I on track there?"

"Yes! Al, that's a perfect grasp of what I was after, in the long run. Did Sam ever show you my notes? Because that is a very apt paraphrasing."

The trap closed.

"I wasn't paraphrasing you, Banner. I was paraphrasing a lady by the name of Mary Shelley."

David bristled immediately at the comparison.

"Look, I wasn't trying to create a perfect master race. I was just trying to give the one we have that crucial missing edge. You mentioned North Vietnam. How long were you in recovery, just for the physical effects of your captivity?"

Al hesitated a moment, and then spoke.

"Nine months. Some of it was like being born all over again, and having to learn every last detail of living in the world. Victor Charlie specialized in taking everything away from you, while you were in those tiger cages."

"Well, imagine that you could have had it all back within a month. You'd then have been in a much better position to begin your emotional recovery."

Al dismissed this train of thought.

"Those nine months made me who and what I am today. Collapsing between parallel bars, hitting the heavy and the speed bags, and missing them as often as I hit, and just plain forcing atrophied muscles back to life? Doc, those things were my emotional recovery. Your way would make it all meaningless."

David seemed set to raise his voice for real this time, but suddenly stopped and took in some water. For obvious reasons, Al became concerned.

"You're not about to go green, are you?"

Not that he had really seen him turn that color. But Banner shook his head.

"No. It takes a lot more than a heated debate to do that, trust me. No, I stopped because I realized that I was sitting here, stridently defending the theories that helped ruin my life. You're right, Admiral. My way doesn't work. Hasn't worked, for fourteen years."

Calavicci made a concession.

"Let's keep it to Al, alright? And you were talking about a paper that you failed Sam for?"

"I later revised it to satisfactory when he added in to his proposal a dedicated supercomputer meant to keep these variables in line. That at least showed me that he knew this wasn't a chalkboard kind of project."

Al chuckled.

"So you're the one who pushed Sam to conceive Ziggy. Heh. And he did it all prolly just to make you eat crow, knowing Sam. And I guess we both do."

David closed his eyes.

"Al, where my rage built up, Sam digested his. Where I made the Hulk, he made this. My hero was a president in a wheelchair, who somehow found the strength to lift a whole country through a depression and a war. Sam's was a preacher so enraged that his children couldn't go to certain amusement parks that he determined to change his country and his entire world. The differences between us are likely summed up right there."

Al was still wary, but understood the easy acceptance of the others just a little better.

"Hold up, Doc. Both those men were great, but both had their flaws. And don't think Sam has this steel lock grip on his rage. Now, where did you run with your bundled string?"

"I left the university for The Culver Institute, which expressed interest in funding my research. Sam told me I was just substituting a goal for my rage. It was nearly the last time we ever spoke. I won't say that Elaina Marks followed me, but that was how it worked out. Then I found the common thread. The part of the probability string that said I was right in one respect at least. Our hidden strength could be tapped, and in fact, had been throughout history."

"Where, exactly?"

"We've all heard the stories of people who, when the time came, did things that can only be described as superhuman. People no different than you or I--so to speak--showing bursts of strength that defy explanations of adrenalin or self-hypnosis or anything most science can explain."

Al scratched his head, and then held up his opened hand.

"No offense, Doc. But most of those stories are born at seven feet tall, and they add a few inches every time they get retold."

David made a surprising comparison.

"Churches have strict criteria for verifying miracles, Al. So do scientists. I didn't even bother with such a story unless no true consensus had been arrived at to provide an explanation. I looked through medical and police records, to be certain that this was not an individual bent on self promotion. I refused those whose religious faith had been taken up or down by these astounding events, because a survivor can either think themselves divinely touched, or give up their beliefs out of guilt over those that didn't make it. I looked for stark consistency of testimony. In the end, we had about fifty people."

"Andddd---they taught you?"

"Nothing at all. They were of too wide and diverse a selection for dietary, genetic or environmental causes to even be factored in.

Al now showed Banner that a few diplomas rested alongside all those medals.

"So you factored in a unique temporary factor common to all those situations. Gamma radiation, right?"

Now it was David's jaw that nearly dropped.

"How could you know that?"

"Doc. c'mon. You eliminate everything a person does regularly as a cause, then all you've got left is something well outside their normal patterns. The gamma rays we knew about already. I'm not just a hard-case with a gun, you know. And even if I was, just hanging around all these eggheads forces you to keep up."

"All of them? Sam and Donna obviously, but you're saying that everyone here is of that caliber?"

"The guy who swept up your debris is working on his Masters. Tina is a bubble-head like I'm still twenty-five. Gooshie may have breath that could take out the Hulk..."

David nodded.

"Amen!"

"...but his head holds more random factors and probabilities than a Cray mainframe."

A noise was heard, loud and sounding like an 'AHEM' at top volume. Al looked up.

"You just had to hook up Ziggy's ears again, didn't you? See, Zig doesn't care much for the C-r-a-y word. After the initial hybrid supercomputer prototype was smashed, we had to resurrect what we could using a --you know what-- mainframe. Zig regards that as being transposed into a lower primate's womb, in order to be born."

"What happened to the prototype?"

Al waved a hand.

"Keep on with your story, Doc. We'll get there, trust me."

So David told of his beginnings, or endings, depending on one's point of view. He spoke of the classic scientist's inspiration that struck him, when he realized the commonality of cosmic-level gamma activity that drew all the stories together. He spoke of impatience, and Al fought off wincing to think of Sam's reaction--or overreaction--to budget cuts that drove him to make a fateful and as yet irreversible leap. David told of a label that helped mislead a man into taking as much as 3 times the gamma radiation he had believed he was subjecting himself to. Then the realization came. The seemingly-failed procedure had worked all too well. It ended up producing not a modern over-man available on demand, but rather a thing from the dimmest, darkest caves, that came out only when modern reason failed. The death of a woman whose love he shared and who, like him, never said those tender words quite well enough. The realization that David Bruce Banner was better off dead. The long years of open road that began then. Connections made. Possible cures within reach, suddenly fading out. Friends found. Lovers touched, never to be kept. Life on the underbelly of everything decent. The creature, forever in the way of any rational goals.

After almost three hours of truncated history, Al asked a question.

"Seems you got awfully good at moving on. Was it just to keep on keeping out of sight? Cause at times, it must have been counterproductive to just pull up stakes like that."

For a brief moment, David stared at Al as though the man were a complete idiot. Then, he realized that he had left something crucial out of his account to Calavicci.

"Sorry, Al. It's just hard describing your own life like that. You're right. It was counterproductive. But I was pursued. Didn't I mention the tabloid reporter, Jack McGee?"

Maybe he had, and maybe he hadn't. But now the project rang with a digitized scream. Al shook his head.

"IT'S ALL RIGHT, ZIGGY!! He's not here. Doctor Banner didn't know."

Before Calavicci could explain, Banner raised a finger to stop him.

"I'm guessing that I know now what--or who--smashed the Ziggy prototype. When and why was you-know-who here?"

"One of our more rabid congressional critics clued him in to our and Starbright's existence. Got prosecuted for it, the bum. How he got in here, we're still not sure. But apparently, his mommy never told him not to touch delicate prototypes. He slid out, too, before I could give him a few choice quotes."

David sat up straight.

"And this happened when?"

Al thought back. Then he seemed to freeze up.

"August, 1991. And you were in New Mexico when you leaped. Banner, where were you headed?"

"Here. Stallion's Gate. I had obtained a PO Box for Sam, supposedly in some desert shack. I hated contacting those I knew, but I thought maybe he could help me find a cure."

"And err--JM pursues you whenever the Hulk shows?"

"Al, he's about as reliable as Sam's old habit of rolling his eyes and saying, Oh, Boy."

Al sat down, almost shaking.

"Guess he always did that. Oh, no. Sam is leading Mcg---our pal---right to the project."

David felt his heart sink.

"Where he'll perform his mischief. Wait, though. Didn't you say he came here because of an informant? Then Sam is just a redundancy."

Ziggy's voice carried through again, sounding vastly calmer and perhaps a little too satisfied.

"He is neither lead nor redundancy, Doctor Banner. Doctor Beckett will likely become the means by which this project will be protected from--that man."

David shrugged.

"Ziggy, I'm new here. What do you mean?"

"I mean, Doctor, that a new timeline is emerging. In it, Jack McGee will, within a week, meet his end. He will be found off a cliffside, likely the result of being hurled bodily."

Al downed some water, and wished he had something harder on hand.

"Sam is going to change into the Hulk..."

David finished for him.

"...and then he'll murder Jack McGee."

Al pointed at Gooshie's station.

"Banner, you help him get me at least somewhat recalibrated with Sam's brainwaves. We need to get to him. He may not have whatever control you do over the Hulk. I'll tell you our end of the story while you go."

David waited a minute before joining in. He spoke under his breath.

"Sam, just what the hell did you get me into?"


	5. Chapter Four The Rage Of Angels

Chapter Four - The Rage Of Angels

AUGUST, 1991

Stallion's Gate was closer, but so was McGee. As good as his word, the reporter had turned around several times, convinced that the man he knew as 'John Doe' was traveling the same road as he. In fact, that man lay ahead of McGee, a few hundred miles and some years in the future, but of course Jack McGee could not know that. He would drive back, yell out some variation on what he had originally, and then move on in either direction, where he would repeat the process ad nauseum. If he had been angry at David Banner before, Sam Beckett now understood his old friend a lot better.

"This guy is more annoying than Don Blake! And that car---I think the Mystery Machine has to stop for gas more often."

Sam had not thought of Blake in years. In fact, it was only the so-called 'Swiss-cheese' effect of leaping that enabled him to remember. Even then, this was only because Banner had recently encountered him once more.

Though Banner himself had not known it, Blake and the Viking Warrior bound to him had since found their release. Similarly, attorney Matt Murdock in New York, secretly the blind black-clad ninja called Daredevil, had brought down the corpulent, corrupt businessman who was his target, and retired as a result. He had done so with the aid of a young photographer who got the impossible shots that made best evidence. But this amazing man had also married and had a family, a responsibility he considered too great to also allow him to keep up the life of an adventurer. A surgeon-turned-sorcerer had given his life to stop a powerful vampire trapped in California from unleashing his elder demon masters, but others would take up his cause in time. If David Banner had been the start of the odd mini-surge of super-humans in a world that never really knew them, the last and most tragic had been an agent who wore his nation's flag as his symbol and his shield. No one ever found out who kept the suicide truck bomber away from the troop barracks in Lebanon. All they ever found was his shield.

Now things were as they had been, and David was the only one of this group of would-be marvels still active. But Sam knew that too would be over in mere moments if Jack McGee found him. He felt the anger towards McGee rise. This was the man whose nosing around had set his own project back immensely. This was the man who had hounded David for over a decade, good intentions or not. This was the man who did something else. Something much worse, Sam knew. But while his memories seemed to be oddly improving, while the holes in the 'Swiss cheese' seemed to be closing somehow, the last and most serious crime of Jack McGee remained to be exposed, and not by Sam.

"C'mon, Al. I know you err on the side of caution, but you must have put David to work by now."

In fact, David Banner was at work, trying to in effect splice the dying connection between Al Calavicci and his time-lost best friend. But for then, Sam had to hide crouched behind rocks off the side of the highway, listening to McGee speak as he had before.

"John, no court will ever hold you responsible for the fire that killed Elaina Marks. The Hulk was responsible. You'll be able to plead temporary insanity with no problem. I have connections. Connections at a research group called---"

McGee looked at some jotted-down information he'd been given by a source with an axe to grind, and then did something that absolutely infuriated Sam Beckett.

"...well, they're called The Starbright Foundation. They can help you find a cure. John? I'm not giving up, John!"

Sam fumed as Jack McGee drove off once again. How dare the man falsely give Starbright's name as a lure for David?

"Maybe some metal shards on the road would stop that little journey of yours, Jack."

But no, he told himself, an accident that took out his tires could prove fatal. Then, Sam fought down a stray thought that said this wouldn't be such a bad thing.

"Get here, Al. Because I am close to losing it."

------

PROJECT QUANTUM LEAP

"Thanks, David. I could sure use a break. Admiral, I'm sorry. So far all I project is a nastier, fuzzier connection with Doctor Beckett. But I'll keep trying, I promise."

As Gooshie walked off, Al saw Banner start viewing the on-screen 3-D patterns showing exactly how two sets of brain waves could meet across time and space.

"Don't you get tired?"

David was already resetting some of Gooshie's work.

"A side effect of my problem. Injuries and toxins, including the build-up of fatigue poisons, are all undone when I change. It's helped me clear out on a lot of occasions. Mind you, I use the words side effect, instead of fringe benefit."

Al wasn't entirely buying that. Banner's stories had included some situations where it seemed possible that David counted on changing into the creature to bail him out.

"How extensive an injury can it undo?"

David looked up from his work. He looked at Al almost grimly.

"Your word that this stays with us."

"You got it. But Doc, what could be that bad--besides the Hulk, I mean?"

David formed a steeple his fingers.

"I once suffered major spinal trauma, up to and including possible severing of the cord."

The implications hit Al like the proverbial train wreck. His eyes went wide, and he felt the sudden and deep need for nicotine.

"But you're up and around. My God, Banner. This really is Frankenstein's dream. Do you know what some people would give for just a taste of what you've got?"

"All too well, Al. The question is, do you understand?"

Images of armies of Hulks in uniform flooded Calavicci's brain. Soldiers who only had to fear flat-out decapitation. People receiving assurances from their governments that the 'side-effects' of the 'treatment' were well under control. A treatment that the injured and ill somehow never got to try and use for its intended purpose.

"You poor bastard. I was gonna ask you why you didn't seek out old friends like Sam more often. But no wonder you give your trust so sparingly. I know some military folks who'd give their left--well, whatever it is; they'd give it, to have you on the table."

David kept on working while he responded.

"The military is a concern. But my biggest worry doesn't come from them, or a large corporation, terrorists or even another scientist with an agenda. It comes from ordinary people finding out that, for a price, they can heal almost any injury. Who knows? I've never lost a limb. That could be in there too. Can you imagine the chaos that would follow as the sick, the injured, and those who just plain don't want to ever be sick or injured demanded this option?"

Al fell silent for a time, as the thought of 'Hulk-outs' becoming a common occurrence sank in. Banner was right. The distraught, the desperate and the vain would call the mutation a small price to pay. David soon asked a question while looking over some project files on the human brain.

"Is my face scarred? Because I seem to be drawing more stares than even my condition and status can really account for."

"Oh, that. Well, usually, the people Sam leaps into--appear as Sam. But except for when you're the creature, you look like you. See, time is like a pencil in water. Since we are bending it, kind of, the images get transposed. You're not supposed to look like you."

"So my leap is different than others?"

"In just about every way, yeah. Except for how easy you picked up on how to use this equipment."

David looked the consoles over.

"Yes, they do feel familiar. Swiss--Cheese?"

"You got it. Some of Sam's marbles are in your head, and vice-versa."

David would later learn that for Sam, this was not necessarily a good thing.

"Al, tell me all about the house that Sam built."

Calavicci fought to remind himself that this man was a potential threat to the project. Beyond the issue of the monster, for Al, Banner's survival skills called into question what he would or wouldn't do to achieve his cure.

"The immovable object met the irresistible force. No one but no one believed that time travel could be achieved. But on the other hand, every last doubter conceded in the same breath that if anyone could do it, it was Sam Beckett."

Al's narrative was straightforward, interrupted only by David's occasional questions and Al's improvised answers and addendums.

"...so the pregnant girl's baby simply regressed to an earlier but still viable state while she was here? But how could Ziggy so badly misread Sam's hysterical sympathetic pregnancy?"

"....but the lady's ex-hubby was some kind of stalker-killer. He sounded to me like an evil Maurice Chevalier. Uh--you do know who he was, right? Cause Tina and Beeksy just stared at me when I made that reference, and I felt like..."

"....along his genetic line? That raises questions about Sam's entire theory of travel. And for that man to be Dr. King's ancestor stretches even fractal chaos theory to its upper..."

"....cases we keep tabs on what happened next. So not only did Machiko's testimony get the nutcase pitcher put away, but I was so happy to hear that the psycho hellcat ex-girlfriend got hauled off for a few turns. Machiko's father-in-law taught her how to use a rifle for when that lying witch got let out, and wouldn't you know it…"

"...whether or not the picture was actually taken or not. Sam remembered it existing, and it certainly seemed as much in character as anything else about Oswald. I'm willing to bet he pink-elephanted himself. That's one trap I've never learned to avoid. Being under stress can trigger the change, but on occasion, worrying about the change has been enough. Sam may have been dealing with a personality so monomaniacal, neither Kennedy nor reality mattered. Events like Dallas in 1963 are like explosions between our reality and the delusional ones occupied by people like Oswald and Dell Frye, the first man to change like I do..."

"....so this super-tough lady reporter got her prize at the cost of her life. The close-up of my face in the line proved to Beth I was alive, and she waited for me based on almost nothing else. Sam's brother, who in the original history came home all messed up because of losing his squadron, now just rotated on out, and the anti-war argument between him and Sam that broke up the family was now nothing worse than what you'd see on 'All In The Family'. In fact, on the same day it would have happened, the brothers Beckett caught their sister's boyfriend slapping her when he thought no one was looking. Can you say, 'All-Kaka'? Cause they laid into him like...."

Finally, all that remained were two of the most serious possible questions. David was hesitant to ask the first.

"How does Donna handle the issue of all these women? I couldn't. I'd go--well, I'd go."

Al appreciated Banner's light touch on this particular land mine.

"Part of me is still convinced she can't. That it's all denial and that one day it will bite back at both her and Sam in a big way. But to hear her tell it, she sees something of herself in each and every woman Sam is with. She firmly believes that her amnesiac husband is searching for her in eternity. She also likes to use an example from the Abby Fuller Leap. Now that was a big one. Three successive leaps were what it took to put that one right."

"Big--in what way?"

"I'll get there. But on the third leap, Sam became an attorney for the Fuller family, an older man with a wife about the same age. Nice lady--but if she ever had been a beauty contest winner, she wasn't any more. I later learned Sam leaped in just as they were about to--heh--heh. Donna was pleased as punch that he followed through. She told me, and this much I believe, that there was no way she could hold Sam and her vow of fidelity as a bludgeon over this poor lady. Donna couldn't allow this woman to believe that her husband no longer found her attractive. And with a bit of situational alteration, her logic applies to nearly everything on that subject."

David's second question would tie into Al's answer.

"Has Sam in his travels ever changed anything that is central to your lives, or this project?"

Al shrugged.

"Except for one confirmed paradox, we just don't know. We theorize that the changes are visible at first, like when that one mother didn't die in that national park, whereas before it seemed like she left her family. Changes outside of here we can keep. We still retain the original history there. But if, say, Sam saved my wife Beth from an accident that would have kept her from having children, well, Doc, we have four daughters. And so far as I know, we have always had four daughters. Did Sam's Dad lose his hand in a thresher? Were Tina and me once involved? Uhhhh---"

David pointed behind Al, a stunned look on his face.

"I get the point. Being at the heart of the storm, you are the least able to see the biggest changes. Try this one. Was Ziggy once a computer whose prototype was smashed until the man who smashed it died in a new history?"

Al looked around, and felt woozy. Ziggy's cumbersome computer banks were now super-sleek, ultra-thin consoles that looked like something out of Forbidden Planet's CGI remake. It reminded both men of Dumbo's Casey, Jr., a clunker train when the cartoon started, and a sleek shining comet after Dumbo did his flying thing. Al asked a question that told David how serious this really was.

"Ziggy, what year is this?"

"Admiral, the year is now Nineteen-Ninety-Nine. Since my prototype/parent was not so very nearly lost, Doctor Beckett now began his leaping approximately four years prior to this date."

Al sat down and looked at David.

"We just either gained or lost five years. It had been 2004. We have to find out if anything shifted."

A concept for which David found he only had one logical response to.

"Oh, Boy!"

-----

Not At All August, 1991

Through a haze, Sam saw it all. Al and David and others fighting like blazes to deal with a new reality. Then, in a motion made up of equal parts heartbreak and relief, Sam felt the world shift away, and whether it was forwards or backwards, he welcomed it. The leap with David Banner had been draining him as no other.

"Get the bearings, Sam. Wherever, whatever, get the bearings."

He was slinging hash in front of line of men. There were guards, obviously and heavily armed. A prison. Another prison, another place of easy death and ruination. Sam grew cold and wondered whether inmates on Death Row were used for kitchen chores.

"Don't push. You'll all get fed."

They all were fed. No one twirled a sharpened implement to place first in a man's gut, then in Sam's hand while guards and angry inmates growled. No inmate whispered to him that the break-out was on for tonight. No admonitions came to start one of the pointless ethnic wars that seemed to define certain prisons. The warden did not pull him aside and ask how his undercover investigation was going. His cell was small, but it was his alone, and it was sealed off from others, a small shaft of sunlight making Sam almost wonder if this was a leap with no purpose, which he knew to be a complete impossibility. He was so badly distracted by boredom that he did not hear the usual sounds made by Al's entry into the chamber. The hologram's footfalls sounded unusually distinct as he walked over and struck keys on his hand link. The clear partition in front of Sam slid away.

"Well, get moving. We have to get you out of here."

Al was playing scout as they moved, staying well ahead of Sam. Why this was Sam couldn't say, because no inmates betrayed his escape by crying out, and no guards who had seen too many Clint Eastwood movies shouted out some standardized variants of what an escaping prisoner ought to do when confronted.

"Al, why am I in prison?"

Al's voice carried the tone of someone who didn't like answering questions.

"The guy won't give his real name to anyone. A young woman was assaulted by muggers. You stopped them, but she charged you with sexual assault. Seems she's afraid of the crime lord the muggers are hooked up with. Local kingpin name of Wilson Fisk."

The name of the crime lord seemed familiar. But Sam felt he needed a lot more to go on.

"So I'm just escaping? What about clearing the man's name?"

His friend's voice sounded colder by turns.

"The little lying fraidy-cat witch won't fess up, Sam. Escape is all this guy has. God and country have abandoned him."

Al turned and looked at him, almost smiling as he said grim words.

"It's a corrupt world, boy scout. You can't help everyone."

Sam tried to take comfort in the thought that he had seen Al like this before. But not only did it not offer comfort, it made Sam feel ever colder. Also, he could not remember exactly when Al had been like this before. Was it in Washington State? Florida? Baja, near the Mexico-US border?

"I kind of thought that's what we did. I mean, look at that girl who wanted to sing with Elvis. We helped her."

Al's laughter did not sound gentle or healing.

"Sam, don't be stupid. I mean, sure, the little nothing got her shot and was happy. But look at Elvis."

A Muzak rendition of one of Presley's songs played over the speakers in the prison. Sam found the name of the tune elusive. Al he found incomprehensible.

"What about him? His life went on as it would have."

Al didn't seem to be scanning ahead for guards or inmates, but this worked out as Sam saw neither. All he could see was endless corridors.

"It sure did. When that bimbo's boyfriend came back later and whaled on him, the doctor gave him those painkillers for his sore jaw. But I'm just *certain* they weren't addictive, huh?"

This man needed to escape, so Sam resisted calling Al on his lousy attitude and raising his voice in a situation that plainly did not call for it. But he did have questions, and he asked them.

"What happened to David Banner? How did you manage to purge me of his DNA-transfer? Al, you did purge me, right? Because if you didn't, then potentially every person I leap into in the future could turn into a creature like the Hulk."

Al rattled off an explanation that was supposed to sound like 'harsh truth'. Something was definitely wrong.

"Banner's where he deserves to be, bright boy. On a vivisection table somewhere. Don't you remember? He was one of the greatest serial killers in history. First he killed his mother as a kid. Then his first wife, the Marks woman, some poor girl stuck in a wheelchair--your old sensei---another wife, a med student named Blake, a lawyer named Murdock. Heh. That last woman he was with, Jasmine whatever? Took her head right off! You made sure McGee exposed him for what he was, and then you leaped. The rest is lost to your Swiss cheese account."

Of course it was all a lie. Sam knew that. But outside of the disgusting story, Al had yet to answer his most important question.

"What about the leapees, Al? Am I going to infect them?"

"Hmnh. Seems to me, Sam that they should be grateful that you stepped into their messed-up little lives. But I guess it makes a weird kind of sense. Then again, maybe it doesn't. You see yourself as handing out the blessings, but you don't want to hand out the curses? You wanna play at being God, Sam, you have to do both."

The Muzak was replaying the exact same Elvis song, this time with horrid-sounding vocals by a choral group that sounded like it wouldn't know rock-and-roll if Carl Perkins kicked them with his blue suede shoes. Sam ignored it and addressed the recalcitrant hologram before him.

"I have NEVER played at being God, Al. You are way out of line. You're talking such trash, I hope you gargle before kissing Beth with that mouth."

"So you're not God. You must be the Messiah, Sam. Hell, even if you had your full memories, you'd never really know how many times you've saved the damned Calavicci marriage!"

Several things came together at that moment. A pipe stuck out on the floor in front of Al. Sam would not warn a hologram of such a thing, and even if he had to, he was in no mood to give the newly vicious Al fair warning of anything. So it was that the greatest shock Sam had ever known came when Al did the impossible, and tripped over the pipe. When Sam instinctively offered a hand up, the shock was doubled as the hand was slapped away. Calavicci sneered.

"Oops. Game Over. Sorry, pal. Quantum Leap never worked. It was all crap. This thing we're in is just a stage set, hooked up to a VR program. Like it?"

Sam wanted to run. Run like hell. What Al was saying was breaking him inside. But Sam quickly realized that what Al was saying, and what he had been saying--Admiral Al Calavicci would never, ever say.

"Nice try. But I'm not buying it anymore."

The song on the speakers replayed again, this time with Elvis himself singing the words that now came out as clearly as the identity of the one before Sam. Though the words in the song merely described a difficult lover, they were in part just as suited to what Beckett faced down in that last of all prisons.

**You Look Like An Angel---You Walk Like An Angel---You Talk Like An Angel---But I Got Wise---**

This was an angel, of sorts. Just not the type Sam or anyone sane would want around. Sam pointed at the snickering monster.

"Guess you don't need my help getting up, huh? After all, you've fallen before. Tell me, just how many times are you going to pull this garbage? Wasn't Maine enough for you?"

The thing didn't get up. It just kept smiling and talking in ever more grandiose terms.

"I own your friend Banner, Sam. I own him outright. I have for years. His rage keeps his soul in my pocket. And he is going to bring your dream down around your ears. My influence keeps right on going and going. I am the Energizer Bunny of the Badlands, and neither a wimpy idealistic Leaper, a chatty Scotsman with a sword or a little girl holding a piece of wood is going to do a damned thing about it. One day I will come back around, breathing lightning, taloned wings the size of mountain ranges, and chewing the whole stinking galaxy between my teeth. Oh, and before I go---"

The thing's fingertips brushed Sam's forehead.

"Here's a little something to remember me--and everything else by. The price of hubris, Mister Hero."

Sam felt a volcano of pain rise, but managed to focus one last time on his foe, punching him square in the mouth, full force, sending the thing with Al's face flying.

"And that's one for you to remember me by. Try chewing the galaxy with your teeth broken, you piece of---"

-----

AUGUST, 1991

Sam began to shake off the haze. He looked at his hands and arms, skin beginning to change back from green to pink. He felt at and about his face, undergoing a similar process. A glimpse at his feet showed no differently. A moment later, he spoke at last.

"I'm myself again. I changed back. I'm back."

But something was different. Whatever the thing really was, it had been real. And it had left him with a gift. A terrible gift, for it was the gift of knowledge.

"The pilot and his pregnant wife. There was a mummy. A vampire. Bigfoot. Aliens. Sammy--Sammy Jo. Abby. That punch-happy older sister I held over the well. Those idiot macho cadets. That bomb-throwing would-be yippie radical. I remember you all, plain as day. I remember D-D-Donna."

The needs and circumstances of a leaper collided headlong with the sincere and heartfelt vows of a man who swore before God to honor and keep to the woman who had consented to become his wife. In the midst of an empty stretch of highway, he cried out to that woman, that sweetheart, that wife.

"FORGIVE ME!!!"

Wherever the thing had taken him, Sam was now surely in a state of pure hell as guilt and revulsion overwhelmed him. He would start to calm as memories of Donna's understanding words during his brief time back home helped salve his conscience. But apart from her, he wondered about his own basic fidelity. Had he loved Abby Fuller as much as Tamlyn Matsuda? What about all the others he had really fallen for? It was one thing for an amnesiac to sleep around. Sex and companionship were very real needs.

"But what about the man who gives away his heart just like that? What the hell is he worth?"

As Sam felt the pain his nemesis surely intended, in the far distance, his fortunes and those of David Banner only grew worse. Through a pair of binoculars at night, the man couldn't see much. But he could and had seen someone change into The Incredible Hulk. He also reasoned out his basic location. Jack McGee slammed the hood of his car in triumph. He then spoke into his portable micro-cassette recorder.

"I'll offer my apologies to the congressman. But exposing the Hulk beats some penny-ante top secret project any day of the week--or month--or--yeah. The Story Of The Century by Jack McGee. I am going to put a face and a name on you, John Doe. It's going to happen very soon, and there is nothing you can possibly do to stop me."

Project Quantum Leap was safe. But its founder and two other men dwelled in a time-crossed zone of deadly peril.

-----

1999, STALLION'S GATE

Al spoke on his cell-phone while awaiting Ziggy's pronouncement on changing events.

"Yeah, Beth honey. It's another Code X. One of the biggest yet. Nah. Just drag Lori Jean down to the dentist--I don't care how much she whines. When she's able to keep that molar in two years, she'll be grateful you did. No, Beth. We're not any closer to bringing him home that I can see. Always. You know I'll have him call you if it ever happens."


	6. Chapter Five The Trees Of Knowledge

Chapter Five - Trees Of Knowledge

David continued talking while helping Gooshie and Tina try to make one last connection between Sam and the project's observer. Al quickly decided that he didn't like what Banner's latest revelation meant for Sam.

"I thought you couldn't remember anything that happens after you change into the Hulk."

A tiny detail in one life might be a huge one when transposed upon another life. This was why David had failed to really make this clear until now.

"I can't. But over the years, I've learned to concentrate on whatever memory fragments might bleed through from the creature's psyche to my own. As a result, I sometimes can see bare snatches of its activities, like poorly filmed long-range shots."

"And this affects Sam how, exactly?"

David sighed, not because Al couldn't understand the underlying concept of what he spoke of, but because the scientist was certain that he could, and that the observer wouldn't like it one bit.

"Al, if I have a mechanism that can punch through the fog of my time as the Hulk, then Sam might now have that as well. Also, mine is a case where I may not want to remember everything. Sam on the other hand would want back as many memories as he could pull through. I end up trying to sift through what are in essence someone else's memories. Sam would only be trying to access his own, which you and he have proven are not erased, only hidden."

Al found that while he liked Banner's jargon-avoiding manner of describing these things, the things they were talking of might almost go down easier with some good old fashioned techno-speak.

"That's not good. If everything should come back to Sam at once, I don't know what might happen. No, I take that back. I know what would happen, and what probably has happened. He changed again. He'd have to. Some of those memories...well, we always pull it through, but man alive, we have some close, heart-stopping calls. With the kind of pain all that would bring on, the poor guy couldn't possibly help it. To say nothing of his guilt if he should recall Donna."

Donna Eleese-Beckett came in a few seconds after that, ignorant for now of that particular aspect of her husband's peril.

"Al, Ziggy wants to talk with you, says it's urgent."

Al got up, not relishing at all what was to come.

"Banner, you talk with Donna while I deal with Silicon Vanity."

As he went to a private chamber to once again spar with the hybrid supercomputer, Donna pulled David up and away from the workstation.

"C'mon. One of Sam's hard and fast rules. Even super-brains need to relax."

"Since I never did very well arguing with you or Sam, I may as well comply."

With some brief words of remembrance about David's late sister Helen Banner, the two walked to an actual coffee room, with couches, beverages and assorted pastries. David stunned everyone by dropping four Danishes on his plate.

"One minor advantage to having a mutated metabolism: It'll never go to my hips."

Gooshie and Tina laughed out loud, while Verbena Beeks only allowed a low but clear chuckle. Donna just groaned.

"Your jokes could still use some gamma injection, Doctor Banner."

David Banner chose then to allow himself to be amazed by that place, and by the people around him. They all knew who and what he was, and to them it really didn't seem to matter. Sam Beckett had built a life there, and it was a life worth getting him back to. The break was welcomed, as was the chatter and yet more groaner jokes. Then Gooshie asked a telling question.

"Hey, David, his pushiness aside, just how good a reporter is you-know-who?"

Banner actually thought about this for a moment.

"Quite a good one, in his time. He did expose the use of dead GI's bodies from the Vietnam conflict as so-called 'pharaohs'. It was a gruesome practice some drug-runners used to ship heroin to this country, wholly undetected. Jack got some people very, very nervous by proving that an elderly doctor in Maine was deliberately exposed to LSD--in 1962, leading to his otherwise inexplicable suicide. He's very good at upsetting all the wrong people. Not as good as his friend Karl Kolchak, mind you. But still good at what he does, unfortunately for me."

Gooshie shook his head.

"He can't be all that good. I mean, look at the obvious clue he walked away from as to who you really are."

"What clue was that?"

"Helllo? There being a David B--something on just about every payroll at places he investigated? I know you did that so that you'd get tripped up less by having to remember multiple names. But this guy was an ace investigative reporter? Jimmy Olsen could have figured that one out and I mean the 'jeepers' guy played by Jack Larson!"

Doctor Beeks nodded in agreement.

"He has a point. Keeping a sense of identity may be vitally important to someone in your circumstance, David. But that bit should have been like a neon sign to someone seeking out a creature with its origins in a man named David Banner, as McGee knew from the initial lab fire."

A stray thought began in David's skull, about McGee and that awful night. But he kept on his present topic by making an odd request.

"Anyone have some reading glasses?"

Doctor Beeks pulled a pair out of her purse, and Banner put them on. He reminded them of an old cliché about hiding in plain sight.

"Seen Jimmy Olsen around, Gooshie?"

Beeks smiled.

"A neon sign can be so bright that you just tune it out while looking at everything else. By repeating your David B syndrome ad nauseum, McGee would never bother with it. He would just regard it as being a dirt-common naming pattern, which it probably is. He would look for anything cute and code-like."

In fact, David's simple cleverness had nearly worn out as the wily journalist grew ever more so, and as they would all soon learn, vastly more desperate to achieve his goal. Yet Tina Martinez found another flaw in David's long-term quest to stay hidden.

"Well, a name can be ignored, or it can be a red flag, or whatever. But David? Your real problem was that whole 'genius from nowhere' thing. My God. How many times could you possibly pull that number off?"

David Banner came to a sudden and unsettling realization.

"Were all of you listening in on the talk I had with Al?"

Donna chuckled a bit.

"Welcome to life with Ziggy, David. When our beloved creation senses an interesting conversation, it wires the place for broadcast. We have tried and tried to break Ziggy of this habit. We actually thought we had. I guess your story just proved too rich and compelling to be ignored."

A whole host of objections to this way of thinking never left David's mouth. He liked and trusted these people. He felt and was accepted here, by peers who knew from the start what he was, and who even forgave his rampage as the monster. Besides, Ziggy's intrusion had saved him quite a bit of retelling time. He let any upset go and addressed Tina's concern.

"Well, Tina--you're right. During the mess with Donald Blake and his hyperactive Viking friend, one of my managers even commented on this. That told me it was time to think of a new tack. But I never told Al this part, so none of you should know it as well. Can anyone figure out what approach I used?"

Donna looked over in mock-horror.

"David Banner. Are you going to make us guess?"

"Well, Doctor Eleese, it seems only fair. You had a camera in the shower, so to speak, so I'll make you guess which shampoo I used."

Verbena, who secretly hated all riddling, got hers in first.

"You worked at a vastly underappreciated posting--like say, a staff psychiatrist?"

Donna seemed to be fuming as Gooshie went next.

"You used a secret device to make anyone who saw too much in your being at the facility in question forget you at the end of each day. No? A not-secret device? Extortion by intimate secrets? Extortion by use of info on embarrassing bodily functions? Why is everyone staring at me?"

Donna shook her head.

"You've always pulled this on me, David. Sam laundered your clothes and I cooked your meals for over a year while you mourned Laura. But that never got us out of the brain-rippers you'd pose."

"You know I did it out of gratitude. You two were just the best at it. I owed you nothing less in return. Now guess!"

"You founded a phony start-up lab of your own, where as long as they were paid, no one would ask any questions--except the local, state and federal governments and local press who'd contact McGee and I have NO idea what I'm talking about!"

Tina, who had long ago been persuaded by Sam to drop both her pursuit of the happily married Al and her demeaning 'bubble head' act, still tended to seem deceptively like someone meant to be underestimated. But this was also an act.

"You dropped the genius routine, and no one at a big lab hires second-rate talent out of nowhere with no ID, and you couldn't take a union or in-house maintenance job like most of those places would have--oh, damn. I am sooooo mentally challenged..."

Her face lit up.

"Mentally challenged! You pretended to be someone with learning disabilities. Yeah! They'd get overlooked and the access rules would be bent for them, and like that. Did it work out?"

David smiled.

"Till a very wise man's very wise wife sent him looking for a ghost. I--I wonder if they're even still alive. Could I try and call? I don't have any family left, except them."

A voice came from the doorway of the break room.

"Like Hell you don't---my brave Green Knight."

In that doorway stood a young woman of roughly thirty-five years. Yet she was not as young as when David Banner had met her, two decades before. A real, heartfelt smile came over the scientist's face.

"Jolene? Jolene Collins?"

The woman, also a scientist of no small measure, was smiling right back at her own personal super-hero.

"Oh, David. I thought you were dead. This woman named Amanda called and said you were still alive, but that was back in '91! Where have you been? How did you get to Quantum Leap?"

Another woman behind Jolene answered for him.

"The hard way, Jolene. Doctor Banner is our leapee."

Despite seeming on the edge of tears, the overjoyed Jolene immediately knew what was wrong.

"But--then why doesn't his temporal/visual aspect meet up with that of Doctor Beckett?"

The other woman was someone David thought he also knew. But he was wrong.

"That's kind of why you're here, Jolie. Doctor Banner's leap has also induced a transferred sympathetic mutation in Doctor Beckett. See, Doctor Banner, Jolene is our outside expert on some of the more obscure whys and wherefores of leaping. If something doesn't make sense, and little about your leap does, we have her hammer out some theories for Ziggy to process. And she's always told us how her inspiration was the brave and brilliant 'Green Knight' who saved her from that clinic and got her back with her mother."

Gooshie chuckled.

"Obviously, she left some of the good parts out."

David kept staring at the other woman, the one who'd just explained the presence of the once-girl he had risked so much to help. He said a name.

"Katie Beckett?"

A look of total panic hit Donna Eleese's face. She moved in front of David.

"David, this is Doctor Samantha Fuller."

The woman whose resemblance to Katie Beckett David had not imagined smiled and nodded.

"Folks just call me Sammy Jo."

Donna kept on.

"David, you've always done this. Don't you remember, when Sam's family would visit us at school, how you kept confusing Katie with her friend Dana? You've never once correctly remembered what she looks like."

David was scared for a moment, certain that either he or Donna had a huge, well beyond Swiss Cheese memory problem. Then he caught a look on Donna's face. He gambled that she was deliberately misleading Doctor Fuller.

"Hey, Sammy Jo? Donna's right. I must have some of Sam's neurons going on me. I'm really very sorry."

"It's quite alright, Doctor Banner. It's my fault for not introducing myself sooner. Besides, there are worse people to be taken for than a successful state senator like Doctor Beckett's sister."

Donna's face now seemed to project relief, as well as a promise to explain what had just happened later. Jolene Collins smiled anew.

"Sammy Jo--tell Abby to bring him in."

Doctor Fuller gestured to someone in the distance outside the break room to come over. The first to be seen was six-year old Abigail Fuller The Second, Sammy Jo's daughter and granddaughter of someone arguably even more brilliant. She smiled at Donna, who seemed a bit flustered but still happy to see the child. In the girl's tow was an even younger boy. Jolene picked him up.

"My pride and joy."

David waved hello, and the boy waved back.

"Hey, pal."

"Hi."

"And what's your name?"

Banner could not have been struck harder had the child's response been a direct punch from the Hulk itself.

"My name is David Bruce Collins."

Thunderstruck, Banner looked at Jolene. She shrugged.

"Who was I going to name him after? A bum who ran out when I got the news? A father I can barely remember? A maternal grandfather who told my mother to dump me at that cold sterile clinic, because I was 'too smart for my own good'? No. I was going to name my son after the man who gave me my life back. The finest man I have ever had the privilege of knowing."

David Banner merely fell silent, and gestured to hold his namesake, a request to which Jolene gladly assented. Though not by blood, he did indeed have family.

"You know what? My name's David, too."

A small tug on his leg came from little Abby Fuller.

"Are you really the Green Knight?"

The smiles and such went all around again and again, till a dour face broke it all up. Al's talk with Ziggy was finished, and it had obviously not gone well. Calavicci looked at the little girl.

"Abby-babble? Would you take David and play in the toy-room? Us adults have gotta talk."

Since all four of Al's girls had baby-sat the budding genius, Abby ran up and hugged Al before taking the little boy out. When the kids were well away, Al shook his head.

"Let's see. A coffee break with an outside adviser and the man Sam has leaped into, all while we are supposedly trying to bring Sam home. Isn't this just ducky?!"

Donna held up one hand.

"Back off, Al. We were all exhausted, and Ziggy was working on finalizing the new brainwave link while you were also chatting with it."

Tina nodded.

"You should be able to contact Doctor Beckett in about half an hour."

Al glared at both her and Gooshie. He looked like he had no patience left.

"Ten minutes. No more."

The two scrambled to get out and get cracking. Al spoke to Fuller and Collins.

"We need to get Banner's DNA the hell out of Sam. You two work the odd angles, right? So do the math, or do the voodoo, or do the Funky Chicken, I don't care! We will not be spreading Hulks throughout time and space. Got me?"

They seemed to, though Jolene smiled at David once more before joining Sammy Jo. Donna was now very concerned.

"Al, what did Ziggy tell you?"

"I'll save that info for your husband, Doctor. You know--the man who CAN'T take a coffee break?"

Solely because she did have a job to do, Donna left without a fight, though she surely would have relished one. Before David could ask the obvious, Al spoke without looking at him, as though disgusted by the very sight of the scientist.

"Ziggy wants to talk to you. Stay calm when you do, or next time, I swear, it'll be an explosive cartridge in that rifle, instead of a tranquilizer dart."

David left to go and see Ziggy in a private chamber. But he waited to do this until Al was gone.

----

AUGUST, 1991

Al emerged from his doorway into Sam's world. By using more sensitive yet more fragile receptors in the upper brain, the link had been temporarily repaired. But it would not last long, so Al moved quickly once he saw his friend. Sam Beckett was slipping on new shoes as he sat on sand near the edge of the long desert highway.

"Sam?"

"It's a damn good thing I bought extra clothes and a knapsack in that town, Al. David's condition is a tailor's wet dream."

"Sam--how are you?"

Sam was not looking him in the eye. This was a bad sign.

"I'm fine, Al. Hey, how's the wife?"

Sam got up and looked him in the eye, now.

"For that matter, how's mine?"

Al lost a lot of his anger, though not his fear.

"So you do remember. How much?"

Sam pointed at his head.

"The Swiss Cheese is now a solid block of Cheddar. Al, there is something seriously wrong with this leap. I mean, why am I here?"

Al simply gave up the truth, the truth which had placed him at full boil, mere minutes ago.

"Ziggy says that the primary purpose of your leap is now moot. And Sam? Zig also calculates, in all cases, with margins of better than 90%, that Banner's creature will cause the complete destruction of the project!"

If Al somehow seemed close to tears or perhaps even a breakdown, Sam felt his rage largely spent, at least for the moment. He cleared his head, and asked a question meant to draw this potential disaster into the light of reason.

"We both know Ziggy can be worse than the Delphic Oracle. So what precisely is it you were told, Al?"

Calavicci almost slapped the hand-link into his opposite palm.

"Oh, gee, Sam. Good thing I talked to you. Old stupid Al wouldn't possibly think to ask Zig to clarify that gloom and doom statement! What do you think I did, first thing after I was told? That *was* the clarification I just gave you."

Sam shook his hand in the air.

"You're not stupid, and I really hope you don't think I'm calling you that. But I don't want the clarification, Al. I want the original wording. We need some hope here, and I damned well intend to find it. I'm tired, I'm in five kinds of pain--and I'd like to get on with this leap so I can maybe someday actually get home."

Al nodded, and punched something up on the hand-link. He read off a statement.

"At probabilities rapidly approaching the theoretical inevitability threshold, it is indicated that Doctor Banner's metabolic mutation will once more overtake him. The rampaging, so-called Hulk will bring about in some fashion circumstances that will sunder our connection with and to Doctor Beckett, and leave the leaper with no ability to be tracked through time or aided by this project for reasons that remain unclear and clouded by a lack of understanding of the theorized unknown force which may or may not direct the leaps in question."

Al nodded.

"Is that clearly vague enough for you, Sam? Banner's gonna go green again, and prolly rip Ziggy's circuits out--I know, Zig doesn't have circuits. Worst part is, we can't throw him out or just leap him into you, hoping he shoves you forward. The one's out because we need him to reach you. The other's out because we don't know how far his mutation will spread. It would make some leaps easier, though. Next time a nerd gets bullied or a young woman is attacked, the nozzles of history would be in for one hell of a surprise!"

Sam knew he was joking, and so didn't bother with a glare or frown.

"You said that the primary purpose of my leap was now moot. Al, what does Ziggy think that purpose was?"

"No go, Sam. Zig says, and I have to agree, that this one is enough of a heartbreaker, it could even trigger the change."

Sam kicked at the dirt.

"Is there anything that doesn't trigger this change? All I did earlier was worry too much about the transformation too much, so it happened, and for good measure I walked into some kind of Saturday Night Live version of our lives in my nightmares."

"Was Belushi playing me? John, not Jim."

Now Sam did glare, but let it go quickly.

"More like Jack Nicholson and Al Pacino."

Sam got back on track.

"Well, if the primary purpose has to stay state secret, what about any secondary or tertiary purposes? Al? Answer me."

Al just gently shook his head.

"Zig can't cipher one out, Sam, except to say that there should be one. But what if there isn't? Sam, this could be our first leap that has no purpose. No purpose and no exit."

"No--way. You can't have a leap about nothing."

"NBC did."

"Al, please. NBC? They wouldn't know a good show if it landed on them. But this leap. So many coincidences falling together. It's got to mean something."

Al walked towards what was to him the image of his friend.

"Sam, we may have to operate on the presumption that this leap has no discernible purpose. Maybe it simply has no purpose at all!"

Sam turned on Al, pure fury in his face. He pointed and shouted.

"THAT, MY FRIEND, IS JUST BINGO-BANGO-BONGO-WRONGO!! EVERY LEAP HAS A PURPOSE! EVERY---SINGLE---DAMNED--ONE---AAAAGGGGGhhh!!!"

As Al had said before, it didn't take a Sam Beckett to figure out what was happening, and that they could neither of them afford to let it happen. So just as he caught what he hoped was a mistaken glimpse of Sam's eyes changing color, Al Calavicci acted to keep his connection with his friend.

"Sam--I want you to hear me. You owe me that much, whichever way our personal ledger breaks. Remember the young woman who was raped by that rich jock bastard? How his nozzle lawyer made her - made you -- in court sound like a desperate, grasping, ugly loser?"

Some might ask why Al was saying all this to a man on the verge of transforming into a creature driven by rage. But his seeming madness showed a definite method as he kept on.

"Sam, the jerk was disbarred! In the trial that followed jock-strap attacking you again, he and his mouthpiece tried to claim that he was only coming by to let bygones be bygones--and that you--she--went wild on him. But this time, the DA broke him on the stand, and he started yelling out how all women want it and garbage like that--and worse than that. The know-nothing fiancée left him after that. Sam, the jock's rich Daddy was so ticked that his precious boy was going into stir, he turned on his lawyer-pal and got him disbarred for good! We won that one outright, Sam! The good guys and gals won out over the angry losers and their money."

Sam's skin did not expand and darken to a shade of green. His almost-growls ceased. He even finally let go of his head as he responded to Al. His eyes were normal.

"You know that you're not supposed to tell me things like that. Al, we have rules about all this."

"To hell with the rules, Sam. The rules we know say Banner is supposed to look like you, back at the Project. But he only looked like that when he cut loose."

Sam immediately took this in.

"He's still the Hulk? How can we both be? One of us should have the majority of the mutated genes. Sweet Jesus, what did David tap into?"

Al tried to tell what he knew.

"Banner says that the creature may be a kind of gamma-awakened missing link. And Sam? You likely don't have the control over it that he does."

Sam looked back at a small pile of shredded clothes.

"Tell me about it. I'd never have imagined that David Banner could have a better handle on his rage than me. Great man, good friend, but that was never his strong suit."

"Well, you just said the operative word. It's his rage, not yours. Do you still have his memories?"

Sam nodded, still looking a bit pained.

"I'm starting to understand the whole Swiss cheese syndrome. It may have been an involuntary defensive measure against losing my mind. David's been through a lot. Though I wonder if he didn't tap into some deeper well of universal rage at some point. Though none of it went to me, from what I can recall, he really has done a stellar job of keeping the creature back."

Al nearly snorted.

"That and becoming everybody's instant best friend."

Now, Sam was actually smiling.

"He's still doing it. Making his joy everyone else's. Then later he'll do the same thing for his misery. But I never once regretted trying to be his friend. I just wish I could have been a better one, in the long run. What do you think of him, Al?"

Calavicci took a moment to respond.

"I liked him a hell of a lot better before I spoke to Ziggy. And it's not just the project that's in jeopardy, Sam. There is every possibility that you're going to Hulk-out and toss McGee off some cliff."

Sam started back down the highway, a frown on his face.

"You'll tell me that, but you won't tell me the primary purpose, moot or not, of this leap?"

Al used the striding focus lock to stay with Sam.

"That you can't effect. But we can keep you away from Jack McGee. We're in a bad way, Sam. By yourselves, neither you nor Banner are murderers. But the creature in you is still his, and it may be confused by the changeover. Confused enough to make sure McGee has seen his last glimpse of Nessie or Bigfoot."

Both men saw the mountains directly anterior to the area surrounding Stallion's Gate in the far distance. Sam decided that he very badly wanted to go home, even if he had to wait eight years for it to really be home.

"How is Donna?"

"She wants her man, Sam. And she understands about the women. I mean, she really does."

Sam grabbed his canteen and took a swig. The sun wasn't bad, especially for the location and time of year, but water was still life.

"She shouldn't have to understand. How are Beth and the girls?"

"Beth lets me do this solely because it's for you. As for the girls? They want their uncle. My oldest may actually--want--her uncle. She's been staring at your picture of late. Geez Louise, where does she get those kinda hormones?"

Sam looked at and waited for the image of his friend to smile at the bad joke. Sam looked away and groaned silently when he realized Al really didn't get it.

"Gooshie? Tina?"

"Tina still likes to pretend she's an air head at times. Goosh still likes to pretend that breathable air comes out of his mouth."

"Verbena?"

"Worried about every last one of us. So much so, it's caused her stress, and she's seeing a shrink of her own."

Sam next asked about a subject he felt very strange about, that being the project's only confirmable time paradox.

"How is Sammy Jo?"

Al stopped, smiled, and hit a few buttons on his hand-link. Another projection appeared this one of a giggling little girl. Sam kneeled next to where he saw it.

"Doctor Beckett, meet little Miss Abigail Fuller The Second. Bright as they come and getting brighter every day. Just like her mother, and just like her grandfather."

Memories of the first woman named Abby Fuller flooded Sam as he took in his posterity's face. He asked a pointed question.

"Al, do I have a faithful heart?"

"Sam, I toldja. Donna understands."

Sam looked down.

"Not on physical matters. I'm talking about the heart. Am I faithful at my core?"

Al breathed in.

"You're lucky I'm just a hologram. Cause if I were solid, I'd punch you for daring to ask me whether the man who's helped everyone at the project, Banner included, at some point, had a faithful heart. How dare you make out like you're faithless? You couldn't be that way if you tried. So you've loved while doing this. So what? It was loving the whole damned human race that got you into this mess, boy scout! You're not a traitor to your ethics, Sam. You're overly loyal to them."

Sam felt grateful but awkward, and so moved on.

"What happened to our connection before?"

Al tried to brace himself, but there was no good way to say this.

"Your new physiology is what happened. Sam, the next time I log out of here that may be it for you and me, for good. They jury-rigged something for this one. But we're moving too far out of brain-synch, Sam. We may not be able to speak again. Ever."

Al nearly expected his friend to quote his old favorite Tolkien, with a word about the quality of who he was standing with as things came to an end. But the mission had worn on Sam Beckett in ways that Al Calavicci would only fully piece together much later, though a big clue showed itself then.

"That's just super! How the hell am I supposed to accomplish anything if I'm entirely cut off from the project?"

Sam was seething, and Al was very, very nervous.

"Calm down. Please--please calm down."

Sam spoke in a loud, but not a yelling, tone of voice. A look of exasperation and impatience was now almost his whole face.

"I am not about to change into the Hulk. I have that much self-control, thank you very much."

The leap then took another slip down what was proving to be a very nasty slope. A voice, this one in the same time zone as Sam, came from behind a nearby billboard. A man emerged, his face all too familiar.

"You don't know how glad I am to hear that, Doctor Banner. For that matter, you don't how glad I am to have this matter finally settled--John Doe. I knew simply waiting you out might do the trick. Now please don't tell me about mistakes, plastic surgery, or lookalike mobsters. As of now, one way or another, the running stops forever. Because Doctor David Banner is not dead, and he is the Incredible Hulk."

Both the man who was and the man who wasn't there felt their stomachs drop at Jack McGee's words. For David Banner's world had just been completely destroyed. And it would not go alone.


	7. Chapter Six In Tempus Veritas

Chapter Six - In Tempus Veritas

PROJECT QUANTUM LEAP, CURRENT TRANS-TEMPORAL YEAR 1999 (SUBJECT TO CHANGE)

Doctor David Banner, physician and scientist, was now standing in a sound-proof chamber, conversing freely with the astounding creation of his best student and good friend. Banner seriously lamented not having a Ziggy when he strapped himself down in 1977. Then again, he realized, this hadn't prevented Sam from in a sense also being a victim of his experiments.

"I'll accept that perhaps I tapped into some kind of *unterweltdonner*---a kind of subsumed universal rage, Ziggy. But I think that you should accept that perhaps Sam has created a 'leaping Hulk'. That perhaps the 'unknown force' is a meta-version of Sam himself, existing as far beyond Sam's direct control as the creature in me is beyond mine. Because I have to tell you, all the places that Sam has ended up that you've told me of sound like the kind of places Sam would go to help out, quantum accelerator or no."

The hybrid super-computer had chosen at this time not to reveal several things to its new friend. Among them was how various aspects of the scientist's work, including gamma-accessed synthesized pituitary and hypothalamus surges, had gone into its basic construction as an approximation of an organic brain. There were other, much darker secrets, of course.

"I have on occasion dabbled with the theory that Doctor Beckett is leaping himself, David. Yet I have also seen vast evidence that his desire to come home is just as deep as his desire to crusade, so to speak. If these desires are co-equal, and in fact I believe the bias is towards a homecoming, then either this theory is contraindicated, or is mitigated by--again, our unknown force. And I still hold that, unterweltdonner or no, you have a level of control over the Hulk that you have never imagined. Perhaps in a life less frenzied, you would have found your way to this same conclusion."

David knew an opening when he saw it, and went for broke.

"Speaking of what-ifs, why do I have the feeling that Sam wasn't meant to leap into me in 1991?"

"Very astute, David. In fact, I am nearly certain that the original primary purpose of your leap was circumvented. Is your sedative patch attached? Because I am afraid what I have to say will prove quite provocative."

David nodded. The patch, activated by a sudden huge spike in blood pressure, was a bothersome but wise concession to make, all things considered.

"I'm ready."

"I hope that you are. Very well. Based on the energy pathway readings from prior leaps, I would guess or estimate that the original target date of your leap was the early 1970's, circa 1973 to early 1975. Based on the events of your life at that time and his prior real-time lack of success in rousing you from your grieving process, I must assume that Doctor Beckett's purpose would have been to prevent the death of your first wife, Laura Banner."

If anything, David's blood pressure dropped at that moment. He spoke in a strong voice, though.

"Then if we can get Sam back on track, I'll probably never become the Hulk at all! Laura's death was what drove me to do the research I did, and to be as reckless as I was. Ziggy, what made Sam end up where he did in my life?"

"You did, David. I believe that the gamma wavelengths your body emitted in 1991, albeit at non-lethal levels, match very well with the time-stream energies that send Doctor Beckett on his way. This in turn diverted Doctor Beckett from that portion of the 'thread' of your life before your mutation."

David felt not rage, but helpless despair, as Ziggy's words truly kicked in.

"What you're saying is, Sam or your unknown force wanted to help me and Laura--but that the Hulk stopped them."

"I truly wish there were a way of phrasing this gently, David. Though superior, I am not without feelings in these matters. But yes, what you have said is essentially correct. However, if we allow instead for the unknown force having a different agenda, and take into account your wide-ranging activities and the effects of same after your supposed death, a new possibility emerges that could give this leap a secondary purpose well beyond the importance of one human life."

David's eyes showed a fearful glare, even though he was in no danger of changing at that point.

"Well, Ziggy, having set yourself up as a mechanical god over time and space, I'm sure it's easy for you to see it that way. But for this poor stupid mortal who's cursed himself, all I see is that I've damned both Laura and myself all over again. Unless--could I be leaped into myself at that time?"

"Watch yourself, David. I have no divine aspirations, though I do fancy myself as the result of such inspiration. And leaping for you is impossible. You would accomplish nothing, save the infection of your leap host--be it yourself, your wife, or even someone like Doctor Beckett or Doctor Eleese. Think clearly, David. Laura did not die as the result of any experiment. No one plotted against her, or sabotaged your brake-lines. A car overturning and then bursting into flames is a tragedy. But it is also mundane and comprehensible. To use your own argument, that effort is the sort of event Doctor Beckett would seek to correct--if and only if his were the sole voice in such a decision making process. But if a larger goal were within reach, then perhaps it follows that certain things, however sad, were always part of the way things were meant to be."

The scientist was not losing control of his body. His emotions were another story entirely.

"How can you--how can any of you here, Sam included, claim to care about anybody when you simply decide that my Laura has to die again? Then, like craven cowards, you invoke this theory of God/Time/Fate/Whatever to justify a series of cold, cruel hearts. Give me the Hulk any day over the lot of you! At least his rage is pure and honest, and doesn't hide behind a bunch of new age malarkey. I've read more coherent theories about how the world works in Jack McGee's tabloid newspaper!"

David would now learn just why everyone at the Project gave Ziggy such a wide berth when conversing with it. The super computer could be superbly brutal, when roused. Only Al got away with what David had just done, and not very often.

"Yes, David. The creature's rage is pure. So pure, in fact, that in well over 90% of projected scenarios, it will emerge one final time before this leap is somehow done with, leading to a catastrophic or like event in the existence of Project Quantum Leap. This may well entail the destruction of the project, and the end of our connection with Doctor Beckett, as he leaps through time."

David looked up at the pulsing light indicating Ziggy's voice. He shook his head.

"You're making that up. I got upset, so you got me back. Not very superior, Ziggy."

"My motivation in saying these things is less than pure, David. But that does not make them untrue. Your leap has introduced the greatest element of chaos into the structure of my world since Doctor Beckett was first informed of pending congressional budget cuts."

David Banner gulped openly. He realized what he had said, and to what type of being he had said it all to. He remembered so very many poor exchanges like this one, both before and after the Hulk became a part of him. He almost wondered if it was the man who needed the cure, instead of the monster.

"Ziggy, I was out of line. But I'd like this conflict to be done. So if you have anything else to say--I'll just ask you to do it now, and get it over with."

"Actually, David, I found the whole experience quite enlightening. So many times, such things end with either myself or Admiral Calavicci 'one-upping' each other. To truly draw verbal weapons and shoot it out gives me a new experience to reflect upon. For that I thank you. But I do have one more thing to say. I have studied another pivotal event in your life. I have accessed records from the fire department, the police department, the insurance company, the lab's own investigators, and the oddly missing pieces of the account of a certain reporter of our mutual distasteful acquaintance, as concerns the night your running began."

David tried to be more subtle, this time, as he responded.

"Jack McGee can be overzealous, Ziggy. But he's not a bad man, and he's not my enemy. He's never done me any real harm."

"You may find yourself thinking otherwise, David. In fact, after I present my evidence, findings and conclusion, I am certain that your opinion of Jack McGee will change forever."

David did listen, and he heard and took in every last word and detail of what Ziggy presented to him. And when the 'big picture' had been combined with logical supposition and common-sense assumptions about that night in 1977, Ziggy was proven correct. For David Banner now felt that if Sam Beckett were to murder Jack McGee, it would be no great loss. In fact, he felt, the world--his world, in particular, just might be a much better place.

-----

1991

In a joy apparent to all three men present and future, Jack McGee strode towards the man he saw as David Banner. He almost seemed to be pinching himself.

"It's over. I mean, it's really over. The Hulk is John Doe, and John Doe is David Banner. Well, you've led me a merry chase, my friend. And you've thrown me off the trail countless times. I even gave up on you just long enough to have a serious paper hire me again."

Sam saw in what he still retained of David's memories that Jack had not been present for either the incident with Matt Murdock or his encounter with 'Jasmine'. He also recalled something else.

"Going back to being a legitimate reporter was always your real goal, Jack. Why bother with me, then?"

McGee shook his head.

"I still hear the snickers. I still get pranked. My publisher still has people who want me sent back to that stinking tabloid. You, Doctor Banner, are my ticket to silencing them all. To showing that not only am I once again a real reporter, but that I always was."

Sam shrugged, and spoke to Al as well as McGee.

"Which leaves me exactly where?"

Al answered first, and he answered quickly.

"Don't go with him, Sam. Ziggy says that he'll plan a big media blowout to introduce you around--but that you both kind of disappear before it can go off. Could be a government agency, not necessarily our government's, a rogue lab, a cult--or even---"

Al looked away from the hand-link.

"Weapons manufacturers. Bio-weapons, to be precise. Or they will be, once they have you on the table."

Al didn't have to add in the very real possibility of the parties analyzing Sam finding out that he was not David Banner. It had almost happened once before. But now Jack answered.

"Well, it leaves you in a better position than you are now. Look at you. A fugitive accused of two murders, one of them your own. No life, no friends. So you jump from town to town, stopping along the way to right some random wrong, and always hoping that the next connection will be the one that provides your cure. Almost sounds like a bad TV pilot."

Again, a desperate Sam spoke to both the visible and the invisible at once.

"What do you recommend I do?"

Al was blunt, even more so than normal.

"Get ready to run, Sam!"

While unsure just what this might accomplish, Sam did just that as Jack answered.

"We'll get you a lawyer. You caused Doctor Marks' death as the Hulk, so I don't see how any judge could possibly hold you...hey!! Where are you going? I have your face, Banner! I almost caught you countless times without knowing what you really look like. How much easier will it be now?"

Al was just as blunt as they moved away from the reporter, and he offered some small hope.

"Ignore him, Sam, and just keep running. He may have Banner's face, but so long as he doesn't have you, there's a chance. If we can get to some rough desert terrain just a little ahead, that little sports car rental of his won't be able to follow."

"Al, if this is it--the end for David, the end for leaping---"

"Shut up, Sam."

"I'm glad I'm facing it with you, at least one more time."

Now he quotes Tolkien, Al mentally groaned.

"I said shut up, Sam. This isn't over, Mister. Not by a long shot."

Yet in the distance, Jack McGee proved that reckless impatience was not the sole province of brilliant scientists. He slammed his car's hood as he prepared to get in.

"Not this time. Not this time."

As Al said, the car was hardly made for rough terrains. But the highway Sam ran on was a different story.

"Not this time."

Sam kept on, tantalizingly near his goal.

"I could have sworn I twisted my ankle earlier. But I'm fine now."

"Sam, analyze later! Besides, Banner said that changing into the Hulk can even fix massive spinal trauma, including the near severing of the cord."

Sam stopped dead in his tracks, at that.

"My Lord, Al. The implications of what that could mean for medical science are mind-boggling!"

Al couldn't believe his friend. He also couldn't believe the sight of an obsessed McGee, bearing down on the targeted scientist.

"Sam, MOVE!!!!"

"NOT THIS TIME!!!!!!"

Far from braking or stopping, McGee ended Sam's run in the worst way possible. The car slammed into Sam, who had managed to start moving, and who did manage to roll a bit with the impact. Al looked on as the brainwave connection between him and Sam began its final breakdown.

"My God. No. Sam."

Perhaps the impact finally woke McGee to the insanity of his actions, for he broke hard around Sam, and then got out when stopped to inspect him.

"What have I done?"

Al looked at Jack McGee with a rage that might scare even the Hulk.

"Congrats, Nozzle. You just replaced Jane Fonda on my list. Yeah--THAT list. And at least she could claim to be young, naive and high. If this man dies, then I will find you and hunt you down like the dog you are. When I get through with you, you'll wish you'd been taken by the Khmer Rouge instead."

But the attention of both men turned to the man Al knew was Sam Beckett and that McGee saw as David Banner.

"David? David, please get up. Don't be dead. I'm sorry. I don't know what overtook me. I'm not like this. I'm not a murderer. Please. Just be alive."

"Sam? Sam, get up and chew on this moron's ear. Kick him downstairs. Don't be dead. It can't all end like this. I owe you too damned much, Sam Beckett. Think of Donna. Think of Sammy Jo and her little girl. Hell, think of Banner. The poor schlub's got enough to deal with, without his leap taking you away from us."

The figure on the ground at last began to stir. One arm looked broken, and possibly a leg as well. But he was breathing. Jack McGee looked up and mouthed a 'thank you'. Al kept himself from praying that McGee would find that cliff bottom in Ziggy's prediction. His long-absent mother had given him that much restraint.

"Banner, come on. Just look at me. Just look..."

"Sam, look up. Look me in the eye. Show me you're alright. Just look..."

Neither Calavicci nor McGee ever received a shock quite like the one they got when Sam Beckett did as they asked, and looked them in the eyes. The eyes were not cut or missing, nor were they bleeding. They were green and wide.

"No, Sam. Please. This is the last time we may get to speak. Changing now will chop the connection off like a frog in a blender."

But the grunting had begun, and as Sam's skin and muscles expanded, also turning green, Jack McGee ran like thunder, got in his car, and peeled off. Al wanted to curse the reporter anew, but realized this would keep Sam from becoming a murderer for now. Besides, the image of the world around him was cutting out as Sam continued changing.

"Sam, fight it! You're better than this."

The new clothes tore and became ragged, as surely as the old ones had. His shoes fell off, shredded like confetti. The last thing Al saw before the transformation was complete was the sight of Sam's creature, who still had a bit of Beckett's features in its face, flex widely and then roar like a bull elephant never had. Then Al Calavicci lost all contact with Sam Beckett.

The Imaging Chamber opened, and Al strode across the project, seeing David Banner working on one of the spare hand-links. In one motion, he was right next to Banner. In two, Calavicci drew back his fist, and before anyone could stop him, his third motion knocked David down to the floor. David checked his now bloodied nose, and when he looked up he once again saw the barrel of Al Calavicci's sidearm, the weapon cocked and aimed straight at his head. Al said two words to Banner as he drew a second weapon to keep his friends at bay.

"Change. Please."

But David just wiped off his face, and took a handkerchief offered him to stop further bleeding. He looked at Al.

"You want the Hulk, Admiral, you'll have to do a lot better than a punch to the nose."

Al was shaking, but still held up the weapons.

"It's your fault, Banner. It's all your fault. Sam changed, dammit. He's changed into the Hulk, and now I'll never see my friend again."

David put his hands over both barrels. If Al pulled either trigger, a Hulk in worlds of pain would emerge, fulfilling Ziggy's loathsome prediction. Al sat down and permitted the weapons to be taken from him. Donna sat next to a man who literally had just lost his best friend, and held him while he fought not to fall completely apart. David tried his best to calm what Al must have been feeling.

"Ziggy told me about the Hulk and the Project, Al. And I've told everyone else. We won't let it happen. I will not permit myself to be the one that destroys Sam's dream."

Al shook his head.

"Maybe it's only fair, David. I mean maybe you should get to destroy our little world here. Cause we sure as hell wrecked yours for good."

"What do you mean?"

Al now looked very apologetic as he spoke.

"McGee was lying in wait as Sam walked down the highway. Had him---had you–ID'd in a heartbeat. So Sam tried to run. Well, Jack McGee must really have wanted that story, cause he chased after Sam in his car, almost running him down. Donna, Sam was alright, basically. But I guess I don't need to tell you what the pain from his injuries triggered."

David now felt a burning hatred of his long-time pursuer.

"So Jack McGee has his dog-faced-boy trophy. Well, he won't have him for long. None of you worry. We're going to get Sam out of this---and in the process give Jack a story he'll never forget."

Al was still sullen, so a Donna too busy to know what David had done with the spare hand-link asked the obvious question.

"David, how can we help Sam? We can't send Al back in. The part of the brain we used for that last session in the imaging chamber will resist further use, and Sam's physiology has drifted too far for Al's brain-waves to synchronize with his. It would take forever to realign him or anyone else."

David closed up the radically remodeled hand-link. He then looked over at the door to the imaging chamber.

"Who said Al was going in?"

Calavicci looked up, thankfully looking not angry but confused.

"You're going in?"

Gooshie shook a finger in the air.

"That actually makes sense. After all, Doctor Beckett's mutation derives from David's own. They might already be in a synchronous mode."

Tina shrugged.

"We know that Doctor Beckett needs contact with this project, if only as a lifeline. If it were me, I might start to think that there was no time-traveling, and that maybe I'd just lost what mind I have."

Beeks sighed.

"On the one hand, David is ideal, Donna. But David---two cancer victims together can either pull each other up or turn their frustration upon each other. Ever hear what happened to the Patchwork Dog and The Calico Cat?"

Sammy Jo Fuller spoke in echoes of the voice that had brought them all there.

"Well, there can't be any leaping until all this is settled. We need contact to tell Doctor Beckett what we have planned--whatever that might be. We can't leap Doctor Banner out unless that contact is so nano-tight, that only Doctor Beckett in 1991 is the affected party. Anything else risks exporting the Hulk across the time-line. Though that one little boy with the wild big sister would have no worries ever again."

Jolene Collins checked her cell-phone camera before speaking. Little David and Little Abby were safe in the secure nursery, three floors below.

"I only knew Doctor Beckett briefly before he made his initial leap. But this man I have known since I was just a scared little girl who wanted the mother that didn't want her. If we can get these two minds together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish."

Donna smiled.

"David, Jolene never heard you two debate the possibilities of a Grand Unified Theory. Al, you may have overstepped your bounds a few dozen times, but the imaging chamber is your kingdom. What do you say?"

Al waved his hand in a pshawing motion.

"I say this project is all about Sam. I won't lie. I wanna be the one in there, with him. I happen to love the guy, words which can and will be beaten out of your memories should they be repeated. But whatever I want means zippo-zilcho-zero. Banner, you're going in there just as soon as there's a there to go into. Ziggy can tell us at least when Sam can be scanned again. I trust Doctors Fuller and Collins are still working on a means to clean up Sam's Kaka DNA."

Sammy Jo nodded.

"Jolene and I just have to add to Doctor Banner's modifications to the hand-link. Once he and Doctor Beckett are in a reasonably secure location in 1991, we should be able to push them through each other, the mainline DNA acting as a sponge from one individual to the other."

Donna called a halt.

"Wait. We tried this, remember? With Lee Harvey Oswald. That was a disaster. The only thing we ended up doing was making Sam more like Oswald."

Al tried to calm her.

"That's because we tried to fire selected neurons from Oswald we thought belonged to Sam. But he himself told me that you can't do that. It's all or nothing. I think what they're talking about is gonna work. Jolene, how soon on the extra mods for that hand-link?"

Collins held the hand-link while lightly glaring at her hero, David Banner.

"They're already done. Seems someone cribbed our notes. Didn't you trust us, David?"

"It wasn't about that, Jolene. But there is someone out there I owe a lot to. A man who truly changed my life. I can't let myself wait a second longer than I have to in finally paying this debt."

Everyone there of course thought Banner was referring to Sam Beckett. He was not, and the repayment he spoke of was not a positive thing. David looked at Al again.

"There's no problem with my doing this? Speak now, Al, because they just might leap me straight from the chamber."

Al nodded.

"Good idea. It's got the disaster seal, and all. No, Banner. Just get in there soon, good luck, and if this is it, I wish you well. Hey, Zig? When might he be able to talk to Sam?"

"The Hulk, Admiral, is nearly unreadable. All I can 'see' is the spiking gamma radiation in the spot where Doctor Beckett should be. And based on the size of those spikes, I must estimate that Doctor Beckett's mental activity either means he is blissfully unaware of events surrounding him in his transformed state--or that he is a man undergoing the most extraordinary torment."

----

SOMEPLACE ELSE

Sam Beckett was a man undergoing the most extraordinary torment. Through a narrow jagged valley he ran, the cliffs above lined with the jeering, maddened faces of those he had known from his years of leaping, screaming about how he had failed them. But Sam in his heart knew this to be untrue, just as he knew who was likely at the end of that valley. Reaching it, a broken, bloodied Sam pointed at the slick demon dressed in a rough-hewn angel's form.

"Why do you keep appearing as Al? Because you're not fooling me anymore."

The thing with Al's face puffed a cigar, and then smiled.

"Ask Al sometime about how the VC torturers stopped his heart for a full minute before the medics revived him. I'm permitted to appear as anyone who's... Oh, wait. You're never gonna see your pwecious Al ever again, are you?"

Sam found his center, and mentally tuned out the jeering images surrounding them.

"They aren't real."

The images vanished, and the thing frowned briefly.

"No, Sam. They weren't real. However---"

The side of the valley wall exploded into shards of rock. A seven-foot tall figure strode through, very green, and very angry.

"---him? He's for real. He's right in here, with you. I own your friend Banner, and soon I'll own you. It's all the rage, Sam. All the rage. And now I offer you a choice--sign on like I've offered before, or Davey's Goliath rips you into time-share."

Sam was at a loss as the Hulk--or the very real image of the Hulk--growled directly in his face. Pile-driver fists would make short work of a man, or short work of his mind and soul. Yet Sam felt the oddest urge. The urge to laugh. Though vastly exaggerated, the monster was moving in the exact same manner as Sam remembered David moving, when they would argue all those years ago. So Sam stepped even closer to the Hulk, and said simple words.

"Stop it."

The creature growled yet again, even louder this time. But Sam was not put off.

"I said stop it. I'm not afraid of you. I never have been."

The demonic phony Al laughed out loud.

"This isn't one of those deals, Beckett. My boy can kill you whether you're afraid or not."

Sam looked away from the still-growling Hulk and at the taunter.

"He's not your boy. You don't own me, and you've never once owned David. Because the Hulk is not a killer."

Sam looked back at the monster.

"You can stop growling. Here, in this place, I can be as strong as you. But you don't need to worry. Because I won't hurt you. I'm your friend."

The Hulk stopped growling, and looked at Sam confusedly but gently. The demonic Al threw down his phony hand-link and yelled.

"You green moron! Tear this idiot limb from bloody limb! NOW!"

Sam and the Hulk turned and looked at the now-frazzled image. Sam asked the Hulk a question.

"Could you be a pal and send this poor frustrated office-seeker back to his home in the places where the sun don't shine?"

The Hulk muttered in apparent confusion. So Sam just pointed down.

"Yeah. Down There."

The thing screamed as the Hulk body-slammed him into the ground at full-force, perhaps even down to the place of evil spirits where the sun has never shined. Sam offered his hand.

"You're alright, pal."

But the Hulk didn't take it. It only grabbed the fallen angel's hand-link and gave it to Sam. It looked woozy as it faded, so Sam asked the creature another question.

"What is it you want?"

The Hulk then did something it had never done, even in David Banner's dreams and nightmares. It spoke a single word.

"Tired."

Sam watched the creature fade entirely, then struck the keys on the hand-link. A doorway appeared. An older man waited there. He was Asian, blind and impossibly serene. Sam gasped.

"Li Sung--Sensei?"

Though the old man had never been overly fond of riddles, he now spoke in one.

"Two brothers long estranged meet anew. Their worlds clash. After a battle and a feud of wills, the fearless one surrenders his fearlessness, though not his courage, and the fearful one surrenders his fear, though not the wisdom it has taught him. Two powers are given up, and one is lost forever. The two brothers find two keys, and gifts precious and terrible are exchanged. Do you understand?"

"I think that I almost do, Master."

Li Sung smiled.

"I was wondering when you would wake up."

----

AUGUST, 1991

Jack McGee held up a cup of coffee.

"I was wondering when you would wake up."

Sam felt the wood floor of a cabin as he sat up and drank some of the coffee. McGee joked.

"Don't worry, Doctor Banner. It's DeCaf. I've learned that much."

Except how to drive sanely, Sam thought but did not say.

"Mister McGee, where am I?"

Jack sat down, seeming very happy indeed.

"A small cabin I rented out here. Kind of a staging ground for that government waste story I was originally after. But not anymore. What do you think of Michael Landon?"

"Huh?"

"Michael Landon. For the TV-Movie they'll make about us. I think he could capture you perfectly. As for the Hulk--wellll, Arnold used that CGI technology in the recent Terminator film, but that's still very expensive."

Sam's jaw dropped. The man was already casting a TV-Movie about this situation. And he wasn't done.

"As for myself, hell--Dustin Hoffman has done reporters before. Wait–he doesn't do TV Movies. Heyyyy—a feature film!"

"Jack--how did I get here?"

"Oh, that. Well, you--as The Hulk--spent several hours beating up on one of those giant standing stones that Native Americans claim hold demons. The way you were howling, it sure sounded like you were fighting with the devil himself. I waited until you calmed down, then picked you up and drove you here. Your recent injuries seem to have healed up nicely, though."

Before Sam could let go with a very barbed rejoinder about lunatic drivers, the doorway to the imaging chamber opened. But the man with the hand-link was not Al Calavicci.

"Sam, what do you say we give this 'nozzle' an interview he'll never forget?"

While Sam Beckett was glad to see his old friend--or anyone at the Project--again, he couldn't help but wonder at the tone he heard barely disguised in David Banner's words. He would not have long to wonder, and what he found out, he would not like one bit.


	8. Chapter Seven Monsters

Chapter Seven - Monsters

In very late August of 1991, a triumphant Jack McGee finished speaking on his mobile bag phone.

"Okay. You just get here soon, and bring along plenty of film. This one is it, my young friend. Yeah. Well, today I get back everything I lost since the day she died--except her, of course."

He hung up, then took the bag from his shoulder-strap and zipped it up.

"Those things are a miracle of modern science. Amazing how small they've gotten. That one only weighs five pounds."

The man McGee saw as David Banner asked a question.

"You had a photographer ready? All the way out here?"

"Not just a photographer. That young man is a freelancer at the paper I work for, nowadays. But he also happens to have his PhD in Bio-Chemistry. Remember, before we met up again, I said I was working on exposing some top-drawer hush-hush government project in this area. I needed someone to help me decipher whatever documents I got hold of."

The man McGee saw as David Banner was in fact Sam Beckett. Inwardly, he was grateful that McGee was now being kept away from Project Quantum Leap, in its nascent phase. The ramifications of the changes in his own history caused by this were still new enough for Sam to recall through the filter of the damage McGee had done in the original history. Yet if Quantum Leap had prospered by this detour, David Banner had not. Technically speaking, he was in the worst position possible. Literally speaking, Banner had taken the place of Al Calavicci in the imaging chamber as Sam's only link to his own time. Sam spoke to the image beside him.

"Do you have a plan to get me out of here?"

But it was Jack McGee who answered.

"Well, by my rental car, of course. That'll get us to a small airport near Santa Fe. Though maybe you and I should take the bus, eh David?"

Sam couldn't figure out why McGee was chuckling. It seemed that David's memories had left him, for the most part. This time, Sam whispered while covering his mouth.

"David, what's with taking the bus?"

"Sam--Jack and I were once on a flight together. I was bandaged up. That was when he first learned that a man changed into the Hulk."

Beckett thought hard about how the rest of that secret was now done with.

"I'm sorry that we've made such a mess of things."

Again, McGee answered before David could.

"By us, you mean you and The Hulk? Think nothing of it. You were both worth it. To the tune of a Pulitzer. Heh. A Pulitzer. I always thought of that as being *her* obsession. God, sometimes I still see her in my dreams. I'll chase her, and she'll be chasing her damned Pulitzer. Usually right over a cliff."

Despite the season, the air was crisp at night, and sound carried well in the small cabin, as Sam was learning to his chagrin. He tried speaking only to David again.

"I just can't deal with all this, right now."

For a third time, Jack caught the words.

"That's why I'm here. We'll get you facilities that can work on your cure--openly. That'll be a story right there. I can stay with you and get your POV on the last--my God--it really has been fourteen years? And you know what? We can stage a reunion. A reunion of all the people you've encountered while on the road. Some spoke vaguely of you--maybe some were protecting you. But a lot of them sang your praises. Said that if it weren't for you, they might not have been alive to talk to me. My God--your one life has affected so many others."

Sam did not see David smile at this compliment. Instead, he saw a sneer develop.

"What's wrong?"

Again.

"I guess it's just that, having finally achieved my goal, I'm wondering where I can go after this. What I can do to top myself. Well, at least any prize money goes to my goddaughter. She's my photographer friend's little girl. And she's going to college."

Sam looked at David still glaring, and moved to open his mouth. But David made a slice-motion in front of his own neck, and finally spoke up when he saw Sam's confusion at this.

"You know, Sam? You'd think that after all this time, you'd have learned not to speak to your unseen friend while someone else is in the room."

The simple truth of which made Sam feel rather sheepish. So while Jack was still making some rather grandiose plans, Sam listened to David instead.

"Okay, it's like this. Because of the common genes we share, I've been able to use this hand-link to boost the connection between us to the nth degree. Sam, if you and I so choose, we can make it so that my words will, in effect, come out of your mouth. And that is how we will get McGee off our case."

While off-putting, Sam felt David's plan made sense. He knew the reporter as Sam did not, though how Banner planned to turn back the single-minded McGee was not apparent to Beckett. It was then that Sam made a decision he would come to regret. He trusted his friend David Banner at one of the few moments in both their lives that David could not be trusted. For though he was not muscled, green, or grunting, David Banner at that moment was a creature driven by rage. Rage directed at Jack McGee.

"Let's do it."

"Let's do what, David? I can call you David, right? After all, in a way, we're the two best friends either one of us has."

Sam felt the tightening of the connection begin. It was like a feed of several large tubes being inserted into the back of his head. Mental pathways he normally thought of as just being his felt like they were being re-paved. As it completed, it felt a lot like Sam's tongue and mouth were a giant typewriter and a small David were jumping on the keys. The sense of wrongness Sam had ignored before could not be ignored any longer. Yet it was too late, for by then David Banner's words overrode Sam's just as effectively as David's image stood over his.

"Friends, Jack? That's an interesting way of looking at things. Were Javert and Valjean friends?"

David's chosen words seemed noncommittal for now. But Sam could now feel the Hulk lurking behind every single turn of phrase. Sam knew that the process behind all this was by many standards miraculous, and that on another level, it was simply a comprehensible direct transfer of neurons and nerve relay signals. Yet on either level, it felt a lot like strings were being pulled, and not by him. It was beginning to feel revolting. It would only grow more so.

"I'm a reporter, not a constable, David. And you stole a lot more than a mere loaf of bread. You stole Elaina Marks' life. Now, it's like I said. No judge can really hold you responsible for the Hulk's actions. But those actions did start a very nasty fire, and that fire did cause her death. There is no way around that fact, or the fact that you will need competent legal representation to make sure some judge seeking higher office doesn't make lime mincemeat out of you. I can get you that help, among other things, if you play along."

Sam saw David's smile at McGee's carrot-turned-stick approach, and again he felt gravely uneasy. All Beckett knew of Banner's plan was that a trap was being laid. Intuition said that much.

"Say, Jack? I did read your account of the night of the lab fire, in 1977. And I guess I've always had a question for you. You mind?"

"Since you'll be answering enough of mine, very soon--why not?"

Sam had no clue where David was taking this, except that he didn't like it one bit.

"Thanks, Jack. You're a true friend. Now, on the night of the fire--where were you?"

"What do you mean? Obviously, I was outside. I was coming to see you and Doctor Marks, when I saw the first explosion."

Through their enhanced, enforced link, Sam felt David grow ebullient. The hounds were beating the bushes, the horses were in stride, and the poor fox that had thought itself so clever was very close to being a trophy. Through it all, Sam could not even struggle.

"Is that so? Well Jack, in your article--a fine piece of work--you quote snatches of conversation from myself and Elaina that I know for a fact took place that very night--inside the lab, just before the fire."

Jack McGee seemed a little bit put-off, but regained himself quickly.

"Okay. So I was inside the building. I was hiding in a storeroom just off to the side of your test chambers. You probably heard me when I knocked some things over, so I cleared out. Just in time, might I add. The fire began almost immediately after that."

"So you definitely were inside before the fire started?"

Sam saw McGee's face shift to that of a man annoyed by the talking fish on his hook and its attempts to gain its freedom.

"Doctor, I hardly think even a hanging judge would care about a fifteen-year-old breaking and entering charge, when stacked up against at least negligent homicide. You'll have to do a lot better than that."

David had never mentioned to Sam any kind of remote muscle control. But as he shrugged, so did Sam.

"You're right, Jack. When you're right. you're right, and you are right. I had just always wondered how you got the story. Knocked something over, did you?"

McGee was no fool. His face showed that he was picking up on the tone of voice he was being addressed with.

"Yes, David. I knocked a container over. Chemicals, I guess, and then what looked like some potting soil. Together, they smelled like Newark in the summer and stained a new pair of shoes. May I ask just what the hell you're getting at?"

Back at the lord's manor, the tanner was anxiously awaiting the slain fox. Jack only thought his nose was being tweaked. He still had no idea.

"Getting at, Jack? Well, see, I didn't only read your article about that night. I read articles from other papers. I watched TV News reports. I collated data from the local police, the Fire Department, the California State Police, the insurance company, and even the FBI concerning the disaster at the Culver Institute. Do you want to know what they found, Jack?"

"I--I dunno. Faulty wiring? Bad sprinklers? Electrical generator split in two by a green behemoth?"

Sam lost the image of the fox. This was a man, and it was a man in more trouble than he could possibly imagine. For Sam now knew where David Banner was leading Jack McGee.

"No, Jack. They all came to the conclusion that the fire was caused by someone knocking over one or two secured containers of chemicals that, though harmless by themselves, mixed together with the fertilizer to form a substance that burns rapidly on contact with air. And they also found the residue of fairly expensive leather underneath the residue of the containers in the wreckage. And where was all this found? Why, it was in a store room off to the side of the main testing chambers. Jack, you're a good reporter. Can you tell me what this revised headline should read?"

The color was draining from McGee's face. Again, he was no fool. He looked at Sam with open pleading that Sam could not respond to, even if he wanted.

"Please. No. You're not saying that...not trying to tell me that..."

His voice was breaking, so David moved in for the kill.

"What I'm saying, Jack is that the Hulk didn't start the fire that killed Elaina Marks."

David waited for the first tear to form in Jack's eye, then finished up.

"You did."

Sam realized, to his utter horror that he had failed to heed Jefferson's rule about not sacrificing freedom for security. Now, as David Banner continued his remote assault on Jack McGee, without let, mercy or heed, Sam Beckett realized he had neither freedom nor security.

"Nothing to say, Jack? You know, when the shades of gray invaded Javert's perfect world of black and white--well, let's just say he didn't take it very well."

The levels that David was taking this to made Sam reconsider his words of defense for Banner in arguing with the demonic figure. For the gentle scientist's soul was at that moment more MIA than Al had ever been.

"But I didn't do it. I couldn't have. How could I have caused the fire? It was just a container. Nothing special in it."

But the lost eyes of Jack McGee put the lie to this desperate avoidance. As Sam and surely David must have guessed, Jack's mind replayed that night, and that moment when the canister's contents began to sizzle and smoke, even as he walked away. Clearly for the first time, McGee saw himself begin to choke as his lungs were filled. Moreover, he saw how he had really gotten out of that lab turned inferno.

"You. David, you saved me. Than-Thank You."

The chill around David was that of the Arctic in late November.

"Don't thank me, Jack. Don't you ever thank me."

Sam wanted to scream, to beg David to stop. But even if one could hear the other on a psychic level, David was in no mood to stop anything. A fact Jack McGee must have finally realized.

"My God, how you must hate me."

The reporter looked away, looking thinner than he had mere minutes ago.

"What would you have me do?"

Jack McGee had wronged David Banner, however unknowingly and now he learned the price of this.

"It's really very simple, Jack. You forget my secret--and I forget yours. And because you couldn't plead temporary Hulk-born insanity in front of a judge, you do one thing more. You tell everyone who will hear you that you made up the Hulk. Tell them that you hired an actor to make it all seem real, and that he may still be out there, unaware of your confession. Then, Jack? You never speak of the Hulk again, in any way, shape or form. Are we understood?"

McGee lightly shook his head.

"My credibility would be gone. Not even the tabloids would hire me after that. My career would be over."

Pointless or no, Sam began to do everything he could to try and break the control he had given David over his body. Banner was relishing this far too much.

"I'm sorry, Jack. But you see, my career has also taken a downward turn of late."

Full in the man's face, David used Sam to sneer his last words, as well as speak them loudly.

"And I can pretty much guarantee that after that night, Elaina Marks' career was never the same!"

Jack looked like he'd been hit full force with a gamma bomb as he walked out the front door of the cabin.

"We have a deal. You won't be hearing from me, ever again. I'm-I'm just going to wait for my friend, outside. David, I'm so-sorr--never mind. I'll do what you asked."

"No, Jack. You'll do what I told you. Because you have no choice."

The door closed firmly as Jack left without responding or looking back. David waited fifteen seconds, then severed the puppet-like connection between himself and Sam. As Sam sat and felt very ill, David looked in triumph at the cabin's front door.

"Well. I'd say that went rather well. Wouldn't you, Sam?"

Sam finally managed to look at the hologram. He slammed his hands on a table and uttered some simple, pointed words.

"You son-of-a-bitch!!"

Despite the fact that a physical confrontation was impossible, David's image stepped very close to Sam's face.

"Is Jack McGee here? Is he headed towards Quantum Leap? I'd call this a successful conclusion, Sam."

Sam pointed at the door, his own contempt and rage building fast.

"Did you see the look on that man's face? You crushed him!"

There was a look of grim satisfaction on Banner's face.

"Have you ever dealt directly with our Mister McGee, Doctor? I don't mean a brief encounter ending in yet another destroyed lab--your lab, in this case."

David's voice went up two full octaves as he continued.

"I MEAN a decade and a half of ducking around corners. A second lifetime in which I had to leave potential cures and sometimes even potential new families behind. NOT because of the Hulk, but because one man had ruined his own life and wanted to rebuild it by destroying what was left of my own. Sam, he is relentless. He would never willingly break the pursuit. So I broke it for him."

Either Sam was past giving David any kind of hearing, or perhaps what had been building between the two for decades was finally coming to a head.

"When you said you'd get him off our case, I-I thought you meant we'd just put a scare into him."

David shrugged, and looked at the front door.

"He looked scared to me."

Again, holograms and time dilation meant nothing as the argument cycled upward. Sam shook his finger in the air.

"You used me as a bludgeon to get your revenge. You deceived me as to your intent and then manipulated me like a puppet to make that poor fool feel like nothing!"

David seemed only slightly put off by this.

"For you and your discomfort, I apologize, Sam. If I could have done this myself, believe me, I would have. But I would not have enjoyed doing what I did one little bit less. For years I forgave Jack's pursuit. He is a reporter, and as such is as compelled to seek his truths as we are our truths. I let all that go."

"How good of you."

"But try finding out that the man who has you on the run is also the one who put you on the run. That the man who tagged you as a murderer is himself the guilty party. That all those years on the run need never have occurred. Right now, I should be long since cured, celebrating an upcoming wedding anniversary with Elaina, and being contacted by you as to this new project you're working on. But none of that can be, and that is solely because of Jack McGee's heedless ambition!"

Sam looked down.

"Yes, he caused you a lot of pain. Yes, he played a large role in putting you on the run. But David was there a need to destroy him? And make no mistake that is exactly what you just did."

"A need, Sam? Yes, there was a need. There was a need to make him realize just who and what he really is, and how very little that means, up against his dreams of Pulitzers and film rights. And if somehow I did cross the line while taking poor, dear Jack to task? Then I'll go out, buy him a piano and on it, I will play for him 'The Lonely Man Faces The Open Road'--and I mean the full composition. Otherwise? He can burn in hell as far as I'm concerned."

Disgusted beyond measure with a man he thought he knew, Sam stopped mincing words.

"All these years, all this time, all the life experience you've had and you are still the angry young man, determined that even the slightest wrong against him will be punished in kind and in blood. Here's some news, Doctor Banner. Elaina Marks would not have died that night had she never been at the lab. She wasn't at the lab for Jack McGee, and she wasn't there for the Hulk. She was there because of you. No one else. Just you, Doctor David Bruce Banner. You, and yes, your heedless ambition."

If David had felt like offering concessions before, Sam's fiery condemnation had surely put an end to that.

"Well, you haven't changed either. Still the tired, haggard, would-be saint so determined to save the world that he lost sight and in this case, memory, of those he should really care about. Like his family. Like his friends. Like his wife. I've failed two wives, a good woman, a sister and a mother, Doctor Beckett. Yet at no time did any of them have reason to doubt that they meant more to me than some unwinnable crusade. And no woman that I have loved ever had to wonder whether she was the one and only. Don't accuse me of heedless ambition, Sam. Because you haven't a moral leg to stand on. And you haven't since the day you placed the threat of budget cuts over the needs of those who really need you."

Sam moved in to retaliate with what he thought would surely prove a telling blow.

"Well, let's talk about needs, Doctor. Specifically, let's talk about the needs of a creature you've demonized. You say the Hulk is your own rage personified, but then you duck your role in his being by treating him as a separate entity. But he is you, David. And he is tired of being your outlet. You know how I know this? He told me himself."

Before these words could be fully processed by his own brain, David had his response at the ready. Almost unnoticed was the noise of a car pulling up outside, likely that of Jack McGee's photographer friend.

"Demonizing, Sam? How about self-beatification? How about the story of a scientist who can't figure out the simple math that results from asking why he ends up in leaps that match situations he would be likely to help out in, no matter what? Why have you never picked up on the possibility that, after entering the quantum field, you gained the ability to leap yourself? Your unknown force may be just above you, just as the universal rage engine that is the Hulk may be just beyond me. But tell me Doctor Beckett. By assigning the whole thing to your 'GTFW' theory, just who is ducking his personal responsibility?"

One oddity in war is that, once both sides bring out the big guns, there is just as great a possibility of a prolonged stunned silence as is there is of more weapons' report. Amid the flames of their friendship and the ashes of their lives, the two scientists took stock of the more rational content of their exchange.

"Leaping...myself? I mean, how? Why wouldn't I have gone home by now? Am I really too much of a crusader to let that one last rescue go?"

"The Hulk spoke? But it can't speak. It's not real, just a construct. It's just rage, radiation and muscle. If it could be spoken to, then it could be dealt with. But why wouldn't I have seen this? I can't be that oblivious--can I?"

Sam sat down, his head reeling. Inside the chamber, David did the same. After five minutes, Beckett spoke first.

"Look, Jack McGee sowed the wind. Maybe he didn't have all that coming, but you can't live life the way he did and not expect to catch hellfire for it at some point. Heedless ambition catches up with anyone, be they reporters, politicians, or scientists. We've paid for ours, and it was just Jack's turn. I should have understood where you were coming from."

David shook his head.

"No. I wasn't just giving Jack his fourteen-year due. What he got, I built up over a lifetime. God, Sam. I don't even know how to handle anger anymore. Lately, I just wait for the injuries and then the transformation to take care of it. I don't just turn into the Hulk. I am the monster. Look at me. I used one of the very best friends I've ever had to pulverize a man for a stupid, thoughtless but honest error in judgment."

"David, don't. If there's a monster here--it's me. If I am leaping myself, then I've kept the best woman in the world waiting and probably crying for no reason. If I have set myself up as some sort of tin-god over time and space, then I should have leaped into you much earlier, before Hulks or McGee or anything. One time, I refused to watch over Beth Calavicci during her time of doubt over Al's still being alive. And Al is like a brother to me. And even if it's the unknown force with me just adding in suggestions, I still should have found a way to make right that which once went wrong. I've done it for total strangers, but somehow, it's against my precious rules to do it for the people I really give a damn about."

David looked up from the ground, not looking or feeling his best.

"I ripped Jack apart. You went after me, and now you suddenly doubt whether you've done any good. Tell me, Sam. Could things get any worse?"

"David, I really don't see how they could."

Many have warned against tempting fate. But there is tempting fate, and there is begging fate to come after you, as the two brilliant men now learned anew. Outside the cabin, they heard the voice of a man they did not recognize, yelling at the top of his lungs in an open plea.

"JACK! FOR GOD'S SAKE, DON'T JUMP!!!"

Sam ran to the cabin's back window, and there saw two things which chilled him to the bone.

"This cabin's located by a cliff-side--and Jack's about to hurl himself off!"

David followed through the walls, working the hand-link to fix himself on McGee, before Ziggy's future headline came true.

"God, please---I didn't mean for him to do this. Don't let us be too late."

Rounding the corner from the cabin's front to its back, Sam first saw Jack McGee's young friend, a man destined to play a small but pivotal part in this drama we call life. The man turned on Sam as soon as he saw him. As was seemingly the custom that day, he was fuming.

"What have you done to Jack? He was fine when I spoke with him, not even a half an hour ago. Now, he's ready to---I swear to God, if he dies because of you..."

The dark-haired man, looking to be in his early thirties, then physically lifted Sam off the ground with one hand, while showing no obvious strain. Sam met his sneer as he looked down.

"Release me. Now. Before things get ugly. And they will get ugly."

Seeing this from his remove, David Banner was forced to make a sobering realization.

"So that's what I sounded like."

David wondered anew how often that hint of provocation in his own voice had driven the other party to keep up their own provocation. Yet now, a second thought climbed atop this old concern. How many times had he counted on his transformation to bail him out? How much of all this was survival, and how much of it was for the enjoyment of a man who could in fact be quite vengeful?

"My God. I thought I was always fighting the change. But I wasn't. Half the time, I was embracing it."

Since David thought that his ill-timed monologue was surely restricted to himself and Sam, what followed next was made twice as shocking. Sam's determined opponent put him down, but then looked over in David's direction, pointing with his thumb.

"Your friend there always talk to himself in public?"

Both Sam and David stood silent at these words. The strength of Jack's young friend could be explained, perhaps, without involving any paranormal source. But his apparent field of vision was another story. David flashed Sam a look indicating that Ziggy could scan no steel plate or such in his head. Then, Banner shrugged, forgetting himself again by speaking.

"He must have extra senses, like Matt Murdock."

Annoyed all around, the young man seemed doubly put off by being talked about without being talked to.

"You know Matt Murdock? Who are you people? Okay. You warned me about things getting ugly? I can make them plenty ugly. Because, Bunkie, you just found yourself in a very unfriendly neighborhood!"

Before Sam could react or the younger man could resume showing his enhanced strength, Jack McGee, who had been staring listlessly and with dead eyes into the abyss just off the cliff-side, looked over and spoke up.

"Whoa, pal. Don't make Doctor Banner there angry. You--heh--you won't like him when he's angry."

Jack, who had not suddenly developed the ability to see the holographic observer, looked over at Sam, a grim, uncaring smile on his face.

"It took me fifteen years, but I finally got it. I guess everything from our first meeting is coming back around again, eh, David?"

Jack's friend only seemed to be getting more confused.

"Jack, what did you just call him?"

"I know you're confused. I just wish I still was, about certain things. That, my friend, is the man I've been hunting for over a decade. Wrongly, I might add. That is the man, my 'John Doe', who changes into The Hulk. That is the not-so-late Doctor David Bruce Banner."

"No it isn't. Jack, this guy looks nothing like the pictures I've seen of Banner. I had to take a whole semester of Bio-Physics based mostly on his books."

Again, the fourth party in this drama looked over at the hologram that in theory, he should not have been able to see.

"That guy? He looks like Banner. All right, you two. I wanna know what's going on, and I mean now."

Faster than he should have been able to move, the man was next to David, and grabbed at him. However, being able to grab a man who was eight years in the future was not among this amazing interloper's abilities. Yet he was also no longer in the dark, entirely.

"A hologram, huh? Probably brain-tuned to your partner here, alone, but I picked up on it. Is that why Jack is seeing him as you, Banner? Is this some kind of scam to get Jack to leave you alone? Well, it won't work. Last I checked, the creature you become is wanted for murder. So bring him on."

David seemed almost amused by what he took as false bravado.

"I bring him on and you'll bring *it* on? Think you can handle the Hulk?"

"I'm the kind of guy who does whatever he can."

Sam lightly whistled.

"Excuse me. It's me. Hulk now. Trust me, you two aren't mixing it up anytime soon."

Jack wasn't moving from his deadly perch, and his friend suddenly took on a look of recognition. He reached into his pocket, producing a loose thread from his pants. He looked at Sam directly, and then folded the ends of the thread together.

"I've attended a lot of lectures over the past decade. This one guy was snickered at, but I thought his theory was sound. So--I won't be taking on Doctor Banner any -time- soon? Okay. I don't know why you're protecting this murderer, though. I thought you were a better man than that, Doctor."

McGee was nearly lost in his own world, but heard some of the conversation.

"He isn't a murderer! You've always been a bright kid, but trust me, you have no clue what you're talking about. David isn't a murderer. I am."

Despite the severing of the puppet-like connection, Sam spoke exactly the words David meant to.

"Jack, when I said those things, I was angry. You didn't start the fire on purpose."

"Well, I don't believe you killed anyone, Jack. This man is playing you, somehow."

David used his visibility to his advantage and spoke to Jack's friend.

"No. I did punish him unnecessarily. I shouldn't have laid into him the way I did. But it's true. Jack knocked over a container, and the chemicals in that and other containers caused the fire that killed my friend, Doctor Elena Marks, in 1977."

"Sorry. I'm not buying it. If you truly knew Jack, then you'd know he is as fundamentally decent a human being as you're likely to find in journalism. He would never allow the pursuit of a story to put a human life in danger. Jack McGee is no murderer!"

The man on the edge spoke up again.

"I am a murderer, dammit!! I am the worst kind of murderer. I am a murderer who made sure someone else was blamed and hounded for my crime. I am a reporter who ran over a human life in pursuit of my story. I am a reporter who created the story, and I am a reporter who has done the worst thing a reporter can do, when it comes down to the basics. I am a reporter who has become the story. On any level you want to count it, I am and I always have been and I remain as guilty as sin. I'm unworthy of being employed by a decent paper like the Bugle. I'm unworthy of the friendship of people like you and Emily. I'm unworthy of the love little May shows me, every time I come over to your house. And at the end of my miserable existence, I am still unworthy of the love of the finest woman I have ever known."

Sam stepped forward, ignoring the glare fixed on him by McGee's fierce young ally.

"That's three or four times you've mentioned her, Jack. Who was she?"

Jack's protector was surprised to see Jack moving slightly away from the edge, just as Sam had hoped and predicted he would, in response to this question. David began feverishly punching some buttons on his hand-link. Jack responded after a moment.

"We weren't hippies, but it was the era of free love. Yet we knew, when the time came, and we both had our Pulitzers, it would be only the two of us, together forever. She was a photographer. Beautiful. Tough as nails. I never minded sharing her, because I knew the poor fool would just end up exhausted. I did okay, too, and she was okay with that. For both of us, the only fidelity we needed was to that prize. The rest would come later. We both always thought there would be a later. I guess I never really accepted that, while none of those other guys held her heart, neither did I. If I was divided between her and a Pulitzer, she had no such problem. See, she was willing to die for it."

Sam had a feeling he knew where this was headed. There were no coincidences, to his mind.

"What happened to her, Jack?"

"She got what she saw as the opportunity of a lifetime. She was embedded with an elite unit in Vietnam. Lived as they lived. Went everywhere with them. Then, it happened. When the unit was in an ambush, she got her shot, and a Viet-Cong soldier got his."

The friend shook his head.

"You've never really told me about this in full. Jack, what was her name?"

Sam responded to this.

"Her name was Maggie Dawson. One of the unit's leaders was a Tom Beckett, who never stopped singing her praises. And her Pulitzer-winning shot helped prove that a POW named Al Calavicci was still alive. To his government, and to his wife. Her one life affected so many others, Jack. Don't dishonor her memory by throwing away your life like this."

Rather than deal with any confusion as to the knowledge that 'David Banner' was showing, Jack stayed with the topic his fevered mind had locked onto.

"That Beckett fellow contacted me. Said she was a real hero to his men. I was also contacted by Mrs. Calavicci. Said that my Maggie was one of two people that gave her the strength to wait for her husband to come home. And you know what? I HATED THEM BOTH! Because in her last moments, Maggie had chosen people we didn't even know over me. Because her damned prize meant more than our lives together. David, remember that one time you saw me at an airport and had me paged? You tried to dissuade me from my pursuit. Well, I was comforted by that. Because in that one moment, you made your desires plain. Do you comprehend that? A man whose life I was seeking to place in ruins had the common courtesy and decency to tell me how he felt. But the woman I loved never had the guts to tell me I was second in her heart. Not to another human being. But to her own name, etched in glory."

Jack stopped walking away from the edge. To all three watching him, he was still too damned close.

"AND I HATED HER for that! So, I became more determined than ever to have that prize for myself. At least our names would be on the same list, if not a marriage certificate. The problem is, in many respects, the Pulitzer simply happens, and that one story doesn't seem to care much for people that want it too badly. And the better papers don't like it when you cut corners by not checking sources or fudging on if you were at an event or not. And then---"

Jack made everyone's flesh crawl by choosing then to laugh out loud.

"I'm sorry, but this part is funny. See, I could have muddled past all those errors, because they literally do happen to the best of us. But I was getting pretty drunk in those times, as also happens. One day, I got a call. Somebody had inside dirt on what he called a major government scandal. In a loud, alcohol-enhanced voice, I told him and everyone in that crowded office that some politician lining his pockets wasn't worth my time or effort, and that he should run along to the stiffs at the Washington Post."

David looked down as he realized the rest. While this differed slightly from what Jack had once told him, he also realized why the reporter wasn't exactly anxious to have this known. Jack gave forth with what he regarded as life's punch-line at his expense.

"So that's what he did. No one still knows who he was. But they know his nickname. And who he ended up dealing with. And the scandal he helped expose--concerning a third-rate burglary at The Watergate Hotel. This my publisher did not overlook. Nor would any other major publisher. Or any worthwhile publisher. Anywhere. Within the week, The National Register was trumpeting its newest acquisition, and I was researching doctors who left weird scars on their patients, one shaped like The Michelin Man."

David walked completely inside of Sam, whispering what he had planned. Sam's eyes went a bit wide, but he nodded in agreement. It would take a desperate move to break Jack away from his suicidal frame of mind. Jack kept on talking, his friend tense and poised to move like a Daddy Longlegs spotted on a sink's cabinet.

"I was still a professional. I saw enough patterns in all the tabloid bull to keep my garbage from stinking quite as badly as some other nonsense out there. For example, I began to notice that any doctor or scientist who had a rep for angry outbursts was a good indicator as to where the best and the weirdest stories could be found. In this way, I found out that a Doctor David Banner had left his teaching position at one university for a research position at another's annex at The Culver Institute, out in California."

David rolled his eyes as he kept on working the hand-link.

"God? I now have a pretty good idea how anger has affected my life. Could we perhaps stop rubbing it in?"

"David here was perfect. A scientist who sounded a bit mad, but really only ever got a bit mad. I thought that a balanced piece on him and his work, laced with a touch of the sensational, would show some of the better papers that Jack McGee was back. Then came that night, when I first saw the Hulk for myself. I figured, here is my ticket out of the gutter. After all, the Hulk wasn't some phony, like Sasquatch."

Sam avoided telling Jack what he knew about the creature called Bigfoot by some. Instead, he moved to draw Jack back inside the cabin.

"You've made your comeback. You said so. So what if some fools snicker? You now know the truth for certain."

"The truth? Yes, I know the truth. I know all the truths. The truths I wanted to know, and the truths I didn't. And these truths have both led me back here, and here is where I have always been. Forget responsibility for the fire. That was my real self-deception. Imagining that I was anywhere but here, even before Maggie died. Kid, give little May a kiss for me. Tell her that Uncle Jack loved her."

The friend was now bitter again, but not towards the other two men.

"Tell her yourself, you coward. Don't leave me and my wife to explain why her Uncle Jack isn't around anymore. Damn you, that isn't fair."

"That's life, pal. And David? Please don't blame yourself, either."

In an instant, the man Jack saw as David Banner shifted into his true image and form as Sam Beckett. At that same instant, the true David Banner shimmered into Jack's view. Needless to say, McGee was startled. His young friend noted that Jack must now be seeing the formerly invisible hologram.

"How did he do that?"

Sam smiled with some apparent pride in his one-time teacher and taskmaster.

"He's the best."

Jack rubbed his eyes, then reached through the still-intangible.

"What's going on? That man--he was you. But now you're here--but you're not here. Did I jump off already, and not realize it? Am I lying down there with my head split open? Oh, God--did I somehow turn into the Hulk?"

David raised an opened palm.

"Jack, stop. You don't do confused very well. I am David Banner. I'm the man you've known in one way or another, all these years. The rest doesn't matter. All that matters is that you listen to me."

"But if you're--you--then who's the other you?"

David smiled back at his friend and one-time student.

"That is history's ultimate boy scout, Jack. A good man who's given up a lot so that poor stupid fools like us can have a second chance. A chance for ourselves and a chance to give to others. I'm giving you that chance, Jack. And I want it back as well. I forgive you for the fire. I need you to forgive me for tearing you apart in there. I wanted a scapegoat for how my life has gone that didn't look back at me in the mirror. But you should never have taken all that. I'm sorry."

Jack was still not convinced.

"But I owe you a life. My life, which you saved, and the life of Elena Marks. Don't I have to repay that?"

David was standing firm, if only figuratively.

"You do. By living your life. Elena was never vengeful. She would say you've suffered enough. As I do now."

Before Jack could respond, David jumped ahead of his sorrow.

"As to Maggie Dawson, I'm sorry. But whether she loved you as much as you did her, or if you never really had her heart at all, she's gone. Certain wrongs can be undone, and certain wrongs can't be. I never allowed that for my wife Laura's death until very recently. I thought that if I got strong enough, tragedy would never dare strike me again. We both know how well that's worked out."

Jack gulped.

"But I'm still guilty as sin. How do I deal with that?"

"You may have to talk to the authorities. Or maybe a higher authority. But based solely on my authority? Jack McGee, I sentence you to life. As long and as prosperous a life as you can muster. You go home with your friend and you live long enough to be playing with your niece's grandchildren. You owe me, Mister McGee. So don't waste this chance. That would make me angry."

McGee closed his eyes.

"I have no clue as to what's going on. But right now, all I want is Bagels at the office, a fight with my skinflint publisher, and to administer a tickle-fit to May. Let them snicker. The Hulk is in my past. David--thank you. Where ever you happen to be."

Jack started to walk towards his young friend. But the cliff beneath him proved unstable, and broke. Though McGee held on the ledge, it too was starting to crumble. Sam was there in an instant, grasping Jack's arm. He yelled out.

"David! Manipulate the pain centers in my nervous system. I can't pull him up, otherwise."

David looked at the hand-link.

"Can I do that? Yes—it's the same process as when I overrode your speech center. I think."

Jack slipped out of Sam's grasp, but managed to grasp a lower rock protrusion. Sam rubbed his sore arm and looked around.

"Is there a rope in the cabin or in the two cars?"

David used the hand-link to scan, and shook his head.

"No. Sam, we can't let him die!"

The younger man, Jack's friend and photographer, spoke up.

"Don't worry. We won't."

David Banner and Sam Beckett were incapable of helping the reporter. But Peter Parker was not. In a single motion, he jumped off the cliff and fell to a sheer section of rock beneath Jack. Clinging to the surface without handholds, he ascended, grabbing McGee bodily, then making a twenty-five foot leap back up, walking an unsteady Jack to the cabin's back wall. Parker looked his older friend in the eye.

"If you head back toward that cliff, my daughter will be signing your leg casts for months. Got me?"

McGee nodded, but also quickly made a realization.

"Peter? How did you do that?"

The former one-time superhero just smiled.

"We'll discuss that on the way back to New York, Jack. I think we can let that top secret project go. Could be--they're actually doing some good things there."

Jack groaned at Parker.

"With government money? Peter--you have a lot to learn about how the world works. But yeah--let's just go home. After all this time, we could all do with some peace and quiet."

McGee stood up, and looked at Banner.

"The Hulk is a dead story. I don't know if I can bring myself to confess for the fire. But David? As God is my witness, I will make it right. You see, I stopped pursuing a wanton murderer a long time ago. Later on, I wanted to know what kind of man stopped and helped so many people, despite the risk to himself. I guess I was looking to meet a hero."

If Sam thought that Banner might balk at McGee's backtracking, he was to be proven wrong.

"I think that you already know a hero. As for the rest--I believe you, Jack. Have a good life, my friend."

Jack headed for Parker's car, calling to have his picked up by the rental company. Parker stopped and spoke to David.

"Will your temporal aspect-altering change a photo's image?"

Sam answered.

"Yes. An ordinary camera will have to see me as David Banner."

Peter Parker set his camera on an outdoor table, hit the self-timer, then ran next to Sam.

"Smile!"

The picture was taken, and Parker recovered his camera. David pointed.

"That's not for your paper, is it?"

Parker smiled.

"Nope. For my kid. After all, it's not every day The Incredible Hulk meets The Amazing Spider-Man. She'll want proof."

Parker joined McGee in the top-down convertible with another spectacular leap. Jack groaned.

"Is May going to develop these--attributes?"

"Jury's out on that one. But it's more likely than not she will."

"God Above, she'll start picking me up soon. Hey, can Banner be her uncle, too?"

The two laughed as they drove off, burdens lifted for the moment. And when the bad times hit again, their friendship would see them through. Another such friendship was now left to settle what business there was. They could not know that for them, events were far from done.


	9. Chapter Eight Twilight

Chapter Eight - Twilight

AUGUST 31ST, 1991

After Sam washed up and rested in the cabin a bit, he slowly prepared to start out back down the road to his then-work-in-progress, Project Quantum Leap. David had briefly exited the imaging chamber. After resting himself, he was fitted with non-conductive clothing and a transmit harness for the accelerator, so that he could be leaped directly from the multi-proofed imaging chamber. David Collins and Abby Fuller were beside themselves to learn that he'd met the one and only Spider-Man--as was Gooshie, who had to be reminded by the children not to ask for his secret identity.

Jolene Collins looked a bit teary-eyed as she and Sammy Jo Fuller worked the ins and outs of essentially pushing David through Sam as they leaped simultaneously, in hopes of sponging out all the Hulk's genetic material as they went. Collins did not want to send her childhood hero away, but she would do what was asked of her. Fuller needed to have her breaks enforced by a Donna Eleese who always seemed to know all her tricks to keep working past her limits. Calling an amused Al at his home, Donna confided that she had forgotten how attractive she'd always found Banner, and how this in turn made her wonder if they would ever bring Sam home. Calavicci offered what he felt was the same vague optimistic speech he always used, concerning that subject. Beth held him, but she knew that half his soul was with a man who was in a way, permanently MIA. Since part of hers was there as well, she easily forgave this. Four young women sharing one and one-half bathrooms soon shattered their small calm moment.

They were, with a very few exceptions, all scientists, and so on that level their incredible mistake was unforgivable. As human beings, though, it was both forgivable and comprehensible, this arrogant mistaken belief that this was just another leap, albeit with a few extra twists. Yet how, some might wonder, could they not see? After all, as one of them would muse again later, this leap had already been as no other. From inside the last shower he would take before leaving Jack McGee's rented cabin, Sam heard David emerge and asked him a question.

"I'm taking some of the clothes Jack left. Think he'll mind?"

David chuckled a bit as he spoke up to be heard over the running water.

"Considering that you nearly had him for vehicular manslaughter, I'd say a pair of jeans and such was not that bad a trade."

Sam finished up, a robe on and a towel drying his head as he got out.

"Yeah. I somehow forgot about that pretty easily. I did want to jump him, though, when he talked about how well I was doing."

"That's our Jack."

Sam got on his new clothes, hoping that they would be David's before they were torn again by another transformation.

"Speaking of forgetting, he sure backtracked on his promise to come clean about the fire pretty quickly. Why'd you let him off on that?"

David, like Al before him, seemed to delight in passing through objects while he waited for Sam to finish up.

"Because I had a feeling he wasn't backtracking. That maybe he was just scared at that point. In fact, if he had just said that he would definitely confess, then I might have been suspicious."

Sam briefly thought about not wanting to have this leap finish too quickly. The Hulk aside, he had a cabin and a bed, with no hired guns or jealous spouses or other such things coming after him. Who knew how long it might be before such relative peace ensued again?

"So does he or did he confess?"

David saw a poker by the fireplace, and quickly calculated how many of those he'd felt on the back of his head over the years.

"He does. Jack will soon contact local as well as California state authorities by the site of the Culver Institute. Then, he'll be imprisoned for a year in county lockup and subjected to tens of millions of dollars in lawsuits."

Sam dropped one shoe on hearing this.

"That's rough. No way he has that kind of money."

David seemed to have slightly less sympathy in his voice, but with some positive reason.

"Yet. Jack uses a bit of inspiration and makes a deal with the parties in the lawsuits. He borrows some money, starts his own production company, and...."

"Lemme guess. The Incredible Hulk...The Series?"

"Nope. Try instead the Number One show in syndication, 'Guilty As Sin With Jack McGee'. Right, Left, Center or Sensational, Jack takes his fellows in the news media to task for their excesses."

Sam laughed a little at the levels of irony evident there.

"Well, who better?"

David was smiling, as well. He didn't envy the news media their pursuer.

"No one. His production company is soon worth hundreds of millions. Jack pays back his debts easily, sets up a nice trust fund for his goddaughter, and sets up The Maggie Dawson Foundation for the families of reporters killed in hazard zones. And Sam? He gets his Pulitzer. For..."

David looked away from the hand-link.

"...his in-depth hard-hitting coverage of the paparazzo's role in the death of Princess Diana."

David sat down in the chamber.

"I liked her. I know she had wealth, and all that. But I always saw in her eyes the look of someone lost in a world they couldn't understand. Sam, will I remember that when I go back?"

"I don't know. I'm still not sure why my memories are back, or if I'll keep them when I leap out."

Sam decided to change the subject.

"What about Parker?"

David punched a few buttons.

"He's one of Jack's top people, playing makeshift security. Jack gets some threats, as you might imagine. But he never resumes his super-hero career. His daughter, though? Ziggy says that she lives to see and play a part in an unspecified event of global importance in the year 2063. A positive event, by all indications."

Sam pushed a button of his own.

"What does Ziggy have to say about certain upcoming negative potential events?"

David knew well what he meant.

"Just a lot of vague talk that leads me to believe that, in Ziggy's eyes, the prediction still holds."

Sam got up and headed for the door. It was time.

"David, I'm still convinced that prophecy has wiggle room. And Ziggy didn't play straight with us at least once during this leap."

Banner locked on Beckett as he left, giving the impression the hologram was floating slightly above the ground.

"We had a talk about that. Ziggy said it was reasonably certain that we would prevent Jack's suicide. I told it that if I was ever used that way again, the Hulk would be the least of its worries. Ziggy's a smart machine. I think the data was successfully inputted. I know how I tore into Jack. But Ziggy still had a lingering resentment from the original history, and wanted to ensure that he would never approach the project again, short of murder."

Sam nodded.

"Ziggy is a remarkable device. But in the end, it still is just a machine. I had to give it a short fuse and a raging ego to achieve even the level of sentience it has. In fact, I used your notes on radiation spikes and hyper-adrenal activity to get Ziggy's heart and lungs pumping, so to speak. Works a lot better on simulated organic life than on the real thing, though."

Sam caught and then silently cursed himself. The cabin behind them was already leaving their sight.

"David, that wasn't meant as a shot."

Banner seemed undisturbed.

"Whether it was or not, let's face facts, Sam. It is true. The worst part is, all that talk I drilled into you about patience--in our work, anyway--and about having all the variables locked down went out the window the night I gamma overdosed. And unlike you, I wasn't under major imminent threat of funding cut-off."

Beckett tried to help his friend.

"One way or another it happened. And all of it is in a part of the past neither of us can really touch. Our only hopes lay in the future, David."

David stopped while Sam kept moving, the lock keeping them together.

"Speaking of the future, where are we headed?"

"To Quantum Leap. That's where you were originally going, right?"

Banner rolled his eyes.

"Sort of. But that's before all this began. Sam, what about what knowledge I might keep? What about Ziggy's prediction? What about possible time-line contamination?"

"David, all I can do is quote a wiser time traveler than myself, as concerns all those possibilities."

Sam smiled and shrugged broadly.

"What The Hell?"

David laughed as they kept on.

"But what will I do when I get there?"

"Easy. You'll seek your cure--and maybe provide me with mine."

Banner puzzled at this.

"Do you want me to stop you from leaping in the first place?"

Sam shook his head.

"Even if you could--David, I've helped too many people. I wouldn't want all that tampered with. No, my hope is, that, with your added brainpower, the effort to get me back will have eventual success. I'm not rejecting your theory, mind you. Just allowing for others. You have the kind of mind that can find those answers. Answers like--how did you make yourself visible to Jack?"

Something about Sam's reasons for not cancelling his initial leap hit David in a way he couldn't explain, at least just then. But other things he could and did explain.

"It was sheer improvisation. Since both you and Parker could see me, I bounced my signal off the two of you to Jack's brain. Wouldn't have worked otherwise. Now let me ask you. Why is this highway so deserted--not to mention so cool in late August?"

Sam pointed around him.

"There's any number of access points onto this highway. But if you miss them, even a souped-up truck couldn't cross the mountains that block it from drivers and from general view. It's not exactly a secret highway, but by limiting how many people get on, we keep security problems at a minimum. As to the coolness, relatively speaking? The Project found a way to tap the ambient heat built up in the desert around us, to supplement our power needs. Nowadays, we wouldn't be able to safely meet our power demands in that way without Ziggy, but that method keeps us from being noticed by more folks than should know we're here. It's kind of a plowshare technology. It was inspired by the tank-killing techniques used in the Gulf War."

David was silent for a moment as he stared out at the open road, the road that figuratively had been his home for a varied decade and a half. At last he spoke words that nearly broke his friend's heart.

"Suppose it ends up that I can't stay at Quantum Leap? Sam--I can't do this anymore. Jack McGee or no, I can't go on like this forever."

Sam had previously thought that the possibility of leaping soon would energize him. But as David was for the endless road of false ID's, temporary friends and elusive cures, so Sam was for the blinding light of time transit that had taken over his existence.

"David--I wanna go home. No--I need to go home."

The two men looked at each other. Whatever foolishness they had shown in their personal lives and in their singular great experiments, they knew they had to change the topic fast or sink into the kind of depression that could last for months, whatever months meant in their circumstance. Sam Beckett nodded.

"Ask me anything. Just steer clear of where we just were."

David went straight for the jugular, or as some might say, the *other* jugular.

"What is Project Lothos? It was in every third whisper among the staff, but no one would say a damned thing to me, not even Ziggy."

Sam looked reluctant to say anything as well, but he kept to their hasty bargain.

"Was. Project Lothos was finally destroyed some time back. We had freed several of their unwilling, tortured--subjects--and without meaning to, caused the demise of several of its directors. But it kept coming back, like crabgrass. I guess you could say that Lothos was our evil twin."

David couldn't believe his ears.

"Time travelers? Leapers?"

"Except that they set out to ruin people's lives. David, for all I know, they caused Laura's death. They could have leaped into you, her, the gas station attendant. They may have persuaded a young woman to murder her lover when the younger girl spurned her. Eventually, we figured out that they specialized in trying to undo my leaps or to place obstacles in places I might end up. They unleashed a literal plague in a version of 1997 that we were barely able to work out how to make right. Their leapers were disposable to them. Everyone was. And through it all, I could feel an underlying --well, 'vibe' of pure hate directed specifically at me."

David took the next step.

"How did they come to be? For that matter, how could they come to be? Sam, Leapers don't grow on trees."

Sam looked out at the setting sun.

"Depends on what kind of tree you're talking about, and with what kind of branches."

"Who was it, Sam?"

The one word that followed chilled David Banner to the bone.

"Me."

--------

PROJECT QUANTUM LEAP, 1999

Al could scarcely believe his ears.

"You're resigning?"

Doctor Collins sat and showed no signs of budging on this subject.

"Al, seeing David again brought my life full circle. I want to be a full participant in some of the newer black ops projects, instead of just a consultant. But I can't stay here. Please understand. Would you want to stay in the place where you had to send your father away? I have to be up and on for my son, and being here will drain me, once we're done."

Calavicci sighed.

"Fair enough. Will you give us till the end of the month?"

"Yes. But whatever's going on at that point, I'm still done."

Al hadn't been all that close to his own father, to say the least. But having deliberately transferred away from a base where a favorite colonel took his own life, he understood Jolene's reasoning and request. The next one was a bit harder to take.

"Sammy, please. I mean, I know Abby could use time away from here. But with Jolene gone, we're gonna need you more than ever. Geez, what with Beeksy needing more time with her therapist on top of all this, we're starting to go up against it."

Doctor Fuller shook her head.

"Al, I'm not resigning. But Gary's aunt raised him. Now, she needs care. The kind I don't want to just leave to hired help. Soon as I find the right people, I'll be back."

Sammy Jo's late husband had been a giving soul, which had sadly placed him in bleeding Kosovo as an aid worker at exactly the wrong time. He had loved Abigail Fuller the First so much, he made sure his daughter bore her name as well as his own. But now his widow was quite alone, and her feelings for whatever family she had left made arguing pointless.

"Bring your laptop and a major-league modem, Doctor. And do not turn off that cell phone."

Of course, Al could have kept her there with a few simple words and a short explanation. But that would have been both cheap and a betrayal. Besides, his personnel meetings were not yet done with for that day. His eyes almost rolled out of their sockets as Tina showed off her ring. Gooshie's grin seemed slightly goofier than normal.

"Now? Absolutely not! Do you two have any idea the hit we're taking at the end of this month?"

Tina balled her hand into a fist and hit the desk in front of her.

"Listen up, Al! We have six weeks coming, and we will use them, short of a Chief Executive order. Doctor Beckett is going to keep right on leaping. My biological clock is another matter."

Gooshie nodded.

"My mother finally wants me to be married more than she wants to kvetch about Tina's faith. I gotta move on that. Admiral, I'd think it would be obvious, even to Doctor Beckett's closest friend. He's not coming back anytime soon."

The words were harsh, but Al just directed the two to clear out, his hands largely tied by regulations and by the long service the two had given. Whether Gooshie was right about the latter item, he refused to even think about. His last visitor would change even that.

"Can you believe it? We'll be tragically understaffed for as much as six months. If anything comes up where we might get Sam back, or to take him away for good, we won't be able to move on it in any real way."

Donna Eleese-Beckett seemed far calmer about this than Al would have thought.

"Al, what did you expect? From relative outsiders like Jolene to workhorses like Gooshie and all around, we've been at this 24-7 for going on five years. I don't doubt their love for Sam, but these people have lives, or they have the desire for real lives. Besides--I'll need some time off, soon enough, myself."

Al knew better than to feel disgust or contempt, but he did feel shock.

"Donna, how could you? Are--are you all right?"

"Al, I'm not dying. Just the opposite. Remember three months back, when we were so sure that tapping into a post-atomic test's EMP from 1958 would enable us to bring Sam back? Well, I bet my life it was going to work. My life and someone else's. I visited my sperm bank, Al, and then the fertility clinic. The EMP portal failed. But the treatment took. Sammy Jo will soon lose her unique status."

Al wanted to be delighted for his two best friends, and part of him plainly was. But he was in personnel mode, rather than personal, and he asked the obvious question.

"How soon do you have to go?"

She bit down. Women had changed since Al was a kid, but some admissions did seem to hit the old stereotypes.

"I'm up against my time, Al. Straight up against it. If it's not soon, it's maybe never. And this is a potentially high-risk installation for health hazards, particularly for an unborn child. And while I hate saying this, I'm not sure how Ziggy may react to another biological child of Sam's coming into the world. The way David was played, I'm not sure Ziggy can always be trusted anymore."

Al said something, though not in blame or anger.

"This is all Banner, isn't it? He visits, things goes ka-ka."

"In a way, I think it is. David is a lot more like Sam than either of them cares to admit. Having him around reminded us that you can't just stare at that long path forever. The journey is worthwhile, but eventually, some part of the goal has to at least be in sight. Things aren't ending, Al. They're just going to change some, that's all."

A gentle, supportive squeeze of her hand did nothing to improve Al's souring mood. After she left, he looked at a picture from Thanksgiving Day, 1977. When he saw that Sam looked a little sad, he recalled why. Sam Beckett had just attended the funeral of a friend named David Banner.

"They don't mean to, but they're all abandoning you, Sam. Don't you worry, though. Al is here. I am never, as in not ever, deserting my post. You hear me, you big dumb boy scout?"

Al's cell phone rang. It was from home. He would have to cut them off quickly, he knew.

"What?! Look, this is really, really the worst time possible. I'm sorry, but....Dinah, honey? Why are you crying? Shhhh...hush. It's all right. I can talk. Anytime for you, cupcake. Yeah, I know you hate that name. Now what happened? He WHAT?! Well, did you hit him back? Good! No, we'll deal with his broom-riding mother. NO! You did not have it 'coming'. Look, Dinah. This is why your Mom and me said not to go so fast in this relation...okay, I'll lecture later. Right now, I'm coming home. Yeah. Call--call your Aunt Katie, in Indiana. She understands. Yeah. Even someone like her. It happens, and it doesn't mean you're a bad person. Just hold on, honey. Daddy's coming. Now."

Al hung up and looked at Sam's picture.

"That little thug hit her, Sam. I gotta be there with her. Please understand. You keep him alive, David Banner. No matter what, you keep him alive and well--until we can remember what's really important---I mean, what else is really important--I mean---I have no clue what I mean."

To his own mind, Al Calavicci then abandoned the man who gave him his life back to go and live and enjoy a huge portion of that same life. He hoped that by the time he returned, the rising chaos would be in remission. This hope would prove a false one.

----

1991

Since David knew that Sam had not set out to create a project counter to his every belief, he waited patiently for the rest of the explanation. Sam was not long in obliging.

"I first encountered a leaper named Alia during something I couldn't puzzle out at the time. I returned to a family I'd visited before. This had never happened, outside of a contiguous leap or a set of leaps. By the time I realized what she was doing, she was on the verge of undoing every last bit of good the family had gotten out of my last visit. But she was only a pawn, and a somewhat unwilling one at that. Sometime later--it must have been relative months--we met again, and this time we managed to free her, killing a few of her overseers in the process."

Neither man looked happy about discussing killing, even in self-defense or other need. But Sam kept on.

"That should have been it. It wasn't. Time and again, we encountered them, our efforts negating each other's where we could find them. Their leapers and agents got a lot cleverer about hiding and doing their damage more subtly. It was a stand-off, with too many people's lives in the balance."

"But it came to a head, right?"

"Only inadvertedly. A situation arose during one critical leap where even the cleverest disguising technology couldn't hide who was who, at least from a fellow leaper. Since they always seemed to be one or more steps ahead of me, my relative exposure meant nothing. Them, though, it cost everything as leaper after leaper met a fate I'd rather not describe. Finally, all these comings and goings exposed--I dunno, let's call it a portal. I stepped through, and found the Lothos Hybrid Supercomputer and the Lothos Project's accelerator. I also found an old, bitter man running the whole thing. An old, bitter man named Sam Beckett."

David Banner thought he had the answer to this.

"Multiple time-lines? An evil Sam."

Sam shook his head.

"That's what I thought at first. The other me then described how he had entered the accelerator just as I did. But during a leap involving a woman who became a member of Congress, replacing the blowhard who wanted to shut us down, he had failed. The Project in his time-line was shut down, stranding him alone in time and drifting through leaps that kept on failing. Supposedly, he spoke to some shady government types during a leap involving an older man who believed in flying saucers. He made a deal to start the project early, giving these lowlifes the ultimate weapon. Betrayed by them, he erased his sponsors one and all. As far as I could tell, in my time-line, I had narrowly avoided giving away my secrets to those same people while under the influence of so-called truth drugs. "

"My God, Sam. An evil version of you I can almost believe. But this one just sounds like the you I know, if you ever gave up entirely."

"Again, that's where things seemed to lead. He said he was attacking my time-line because he resented my success and do-gooder attitude. But David, there were more holes in his story than in my own memory. I seized control of his accelerator and jumped back to aid the lady who was supposed to be a member of Congress. And I succeeded."

David nodded.

"That got rid of him, I take it?"

"No. I came back, and he gave me all these gobbledygook reasons why I failed, why I couldn't succeed. So this time, I shoved him into his own accelerator and sent him back to that mission. Because he really was me. The power behind all this--and it's a being I may have met in other guises, including when he posed as Al, grabbed me during this early leap, and held me for five simple seconds. In a moment of doubt, it took that five seconds and made me see only a world where all was dust. From that reality, no thicker than the space between your thumb and your nail, it directed me to create Lothos. But once I shook my past self free, all that evaporated. In the new history, it started and ended with Alia."

David looked somewhat flustered.

"This physicist's official, learned opinion? Wow! Don't know if I can top that, but, Sam, didn't you wonder how it was possible, even with mutations, for any human to metabolize over a million units of gamma radiation without lethal side effects?"

"I'll admit, I did wonder how you and Doctor Jeffrey Clive managed to find just the right dosage to keep yourself and Dell Frye from simply being posthumous studies in oncology."

David raised his index finger while explaining.

"Frye's dosage was more deliberate, more controlled, and nowhere near my own. I read the notes Clive left, concerning his creation. So why two Hulks?"

While just as brilliant, Sam was well out of his chosen field, and so did not venture a guess as David kept talking.

"I looked for equipment failures, as opposed to mere mislabeling, like in my case. I looked for another outside source, like with my early research subjects. In short order, I came to the conclusion that no human being is able to take in that level of killer radiation."

Sam shook his head.

"That still doesn't answer how you did it, though."

David half-smiled.

"Of course it does, Doctor Beckett. Because the answer is that I'm not human."

Sam stared at his friend, slight disbelief and doubt very evident in his face.

"Am I in the right leap? Because there was this one with these two FBI agents that..."

David waved his hand in the air.

"Then file it. You know enough about this to also know where I'm headed."

Sam stopped, and though annoyed with Banner's pedantic tone, quickly found the answer he was looking for.

"You and Frye and possibly others were born with a latent radiovoric gene thread. A sleeping x-factor awakened by the gamma radiation. In other words--you're a mutant."

David shrugged broadly.

"And here I seemed like such a nice fellow."

Beckett turned the lesson around.

"Tell me, Doctor Banner. Doesn't the presumed rarity of this gene thread counter your worries about someone deriving bio-weapons technology from the Hulk?"

David was ready, as fourteen years of contemplating will tend to make one.

"Can you imagine what they'd be willing to go through to find and obtain those who had this gene? Or to try and transfer it to others? A lot of things flew out of that little girl's box, Sam, before Hope finally emerged."

"Yet, David--it did emerge."

David read off a message on his hand-link.

"It looks like it just may be about to. Get ready to leap, Sam."

-----

1999

Al sat patiently in the EEG Chair, waiting for the scans that would help him resume his normal relationship with Sam. Donna rode herd on a stable of brilliant people who, she hoped, really knew what they were doing.

"Sammy Jo?"

"Doctor Banner will be 'aimed' at Doctor Beckett in 1991. We have nailed down everything on that date, from atmospherics to pollen count to lost tourists on our little stretch of highway. We're good."

"Jolene?"

"David's DNA will seek out its own kind. Any threads remaining in Doctor Beckett will no longer be sufficient to transform him or anyone else into a Hulk."

"Gooshie?"

"We have a failsafe set up, to shoot Doctor Banner ahead if need be, to allow the DNA restoration to happen faster. He may have an early Christmas, but he'll be home and Doctor Beckett will be safely cleansed."

"Tina?"

"Al's brain-waves are being scanned more deeply than ever before. We should have him and Doctor Beckett re-synched within three hours."

"Verbena?"

"I can offer up The Lord's Prayer. That's about it."

Donna looked at her.

"You think I'm turning down prayers, at a time like this?"

The various buttons, switches, levers and relays were hit and the mighty accelerator activated, guided by the finest AI ever made and watched over by minds as keen as razors when it came to their jobs. Doctor Gooshberg breathed in, releasing as he exhaled the breath that both was and was not a joke to those around him.

"We have a lock on Doctors Banner and Beckett."

A series of smiles stopped dead on their way back to Gooshie, who shook his head in disbelief.

"We have lost the lock. While--while Doctor Banner was in transit."

Jolene Collins began to cry as her readouts confirmed what was being said. Ziggy spoke up.

"I fear that Doctor Banner has discorporated. And I can find no sign of Doctor Beckett, or of the Hulk."

Al got up and shook his head at the readouts.

"What the hell happened?"

Donna was on the verge of shaking apart as she analyzed what she had.

"The gamma energy threw off the lock, past the upper limits of our ability to compensate. So, instead of curing Sam and sending David on his way---"

She collapsed in Calavicci's arms, reduced to a college-age girl getting that dreaded final telegram from her father's arm of the service.

"Al, we just killed them both!!"

Al Calavicci heard a pounding, certain that his head was about to explode from grief. But part of him refused to give up on Sam, and he knew what kind of survivor Banner was. Then, he turned towards the imaging chamber as though puzzled.

"That pounding isn't in my head."

----

1991

Sam asked a gentle question that David almost found insulting.

"Hey, David, are we friends? I mean, are we more than just two guys who met, argued, joked and then met again? I just hate presuming. I'm used to leaving no discernible footsteps."

But David realized all that Sam had been through, and how much it was wearing on him. How long could any man keep to the road, before the road ate all that was left of him? It was a question David realized still faced him, when he returned.

"I think only you would ask that, Sam. But the answer is yes. While I was dealing with this power, this curse, this albatross around my neck--you, Sam Beckett, kept the faith. If you weren't my friend, I'd want you as one, anyway."

David Banner then put aside the hand-link, and both men readied themselves for the next step in their lives. Sam Beckett closed his eyes, preparing for that brilliant flash of blue that would take him everywhere a man could want to go--except home. Sam opened them again, when he heard David Banner screaming.

"SAAAMM!! HEEEEELPPP MEEEEEEE!!!"

To Sam's great horror, David was fading in and out. At one point, he appeared to be in both the imaging chamber and Sam's present time and place at once.

"Donna, Al! Stop! He'll DIE!!"

As he saw what he feared would be the final fade-out, he acted. Bypassing whys, wherefores, arguments and theories, Sam Beckett acted to save his friend David Banner in the only way possible.

"Please be right about me, David. God, whether it's you or me, let's just do this. I failed him once. I can't let it happen again."

Sam ignored all the 'rules' as he knew them and imagined his body surrounded by a familiar blue light. Leaping himself into the nanoseconds that were all that was left of David's life, Sam Beckett vanished. The pain involved made even his one-time electro-shock therapy seem like grabbing a metal doorknob too quickly. Unconsciousness took him as he felt a man solidify in front of him. He awoke to find he had succeeded, and saved his friend.

"David?"

A hand that felt like stone backhanded Sam in the darkness, amid growls and grunts. The world went blank. But it wasn't blank for long.

--------

1999

Al ordered everyone to step away from the imaging chamber, and the pounding that grew louder from within.

"Ok, so he made it, and we're glad he did. But right now, he's in no shape to be helped or comforted. Luckily--and this is about the only luck we've had--even a Hulk can't get through that disaster seal."

Al had known he was tempting fate with his words. Yet he still cursed a few choice Italian phrases as the seal and the door to the chamber flew away. But instead of standing at the doorway and growling, the Hulk went flying along with the two safeguards, looking badly stunned as he stirred. Gooshie was the first one to speak.

"Admiral? If Doctor Banner is transformed, then why doesn't he look like Doctor Beckett anymore? And–what could possibly do that to the Hulk?"

The answer to that question was standing in the shattered doorway, and it was growling, fully prepared to strike out at its competitor, and at the very place it had once called home. Its features and body, though green, enlarged and distorted, were yet unmistakable to all present. In a meek voice, Al said words he had dreamed of saying, though never under these nightmarish circumstances.

"Welcome Home, Sam."

As the creature that had been Sam Beckett looked about it, Al Calavicci moved by instinct to restrain Donna Eleese-Beckett, who he knew would begin running to her transformed husband. Ziggy began lowering a clear shield in front of itself made of a substance that was glass the way a carrier's hull was tin. Designed to take direct shell impact from an RPG or long-distance fire from a 46MM cannon, the Hulk was not punching his way through this barrier any time soon.

"Good job, Zig! Now do the accelerator."

As during the initial attack by David Banner's creature, the accelerator and its platform began to lower into its disaster shell. But before it could sink through, the Sam-Hulk grabbed a steel bolt from the shattered imaging room door and threw it. The accelerator was not so delicate as to be harmed in such a way, but the bolt fell after it bounced off, settling in the lowering mechanism. The monster howled in triumph as the device stopped its descent to safety. As Al ran for his rifle, Gooshie was pulled aside by Tina as the awkward man pointed at the Sam-Hulk and asked a question.

"Did he do that on purpose?"

With Al no longer restraining her, Donna neither ran to Sam nor ran away from him. Leaving the ramp of the destroyed imaging room, the creature slowed as it saw her. Its head cocked back and forth as it looked her over, a confused fascination mixing with distant recognition. Speaking into a personal recorder as they neared one another, Donna could not know how closely she was mirroring her tragic friend Elaina Marks, during her last days.

"Doctor Beckett's creature is taller than the one Doctor Banner transforms into. The facial features are more angular, yet are more reflective of his normal appearance as well. While thicker and unkempt, his hair pattern is also flowing in the general pattern of his normal appearance. This ties in with data provided by Doctor Banner, concerning the creature that emerged from the psychotic Dell Frye. Each Hulk, in short, is different. While Doctor Banner's creature is primate-like, and Frye's was apparently somewhat lupine, Doctor Beckett's reminds me almost of an upright equine in his stance and gaze. The musculature also suggests this. He---he is my husband, and he's coming towards me."

Slowly, the Sam-Hulk approached her. He stopped suddenly, and turned an ear in her direction. Looking at her directly once again, it bent one knee, looking like it was about to propose. Instead, it reached slowly towards Donna's stomach, stopping short of touching her. The ear turned back to her, and then the Sam-Hulk gazed up, looking at first bewildered and then almost smiling. It stood, and looked calm and very contented. Donna could only think of one reason why this might be.

"You know, don't you?"

She was unsure of whether to take his hand, or to let him touch her in this state, wondering if his radiation was enough to affect their child. A voice from behind her added to the tension of the moment.

"Donna? Are you sure it's all right to be near him?"

Sammy Jo Fuller's presence also confused the creature, its enhanced sense of smell catching the secret no one spoke of. Yet calm and confusion quickly gave way to rage as it was struck from behind. David Banner's Hulk was through stirring. In the distance, adjusting his rifle and his vantage point was an Al Calavicci desperately trying to keep either monster from fulfilling Ziggy's prediction.

"Great. Hulk vs. Hulk. The non-musical team of Sam and Dave tour Quantum Leap--and they're looking to bring down the house. Ziggy!"

As the two monsters regarded each other, and as Sammy Jo pulled Donna well away from the fight zone, Ziggy answered.

"Yes, Admiral?"

"One: How did we get Sam back? Two: How do we get rid of these two again?"

"I am unsure on the second question, Admiral. Even if they were both nearer the accelerator, their gamma energy makes scanning anything else next to impossible, let alone sending them away. But I can answer the first question. Simply put, Doctor Banner's theory was correct. Doctor Beckett has either always had or has obtained the ability to leap himself through time. He accessed that ability in this critical instance in order to save Doctor Banner's life."

"Typical. We spend five years trying to retrieve him, and Sam just comes back when he's good and ready. Our boy scout in action."

Al readied his rifle, knowing that the moment to fire would present itself when it was good and ready. Not too far away, the circling was done. Banner's creature punched Beckett's full in the stomach, then straight in the face, and then threw him bodily. As Sam-Hulk staggered to his feet, the door from the imaging chamber struck him, staggering the creature as its opponent continued its relentless assault. Another set of blows to the head and stomach had Beckett's creature bent over and looking at the floor, perhaps permanently. Banner's creature brought its fists together on either side of Sam-Hulk's head, looking to strike one last time. Al was unsure as to whether to take his best friend down with the first shot, thus sparing him any more beatings, or to get Banner calm once more and in a hurry.

"Sam--stay down! Don't let him keep pounding you."

But the lowering fists never struck. Sam-Hulk raised his arms and blocked the fists with the backs of his hands. Banner-Hulk moved to punch him in the head once more straight on, but Sam-Hulk sidestepped it as Al's jaw dropped. Sam-Hulk then backhanded Banner-Hulk, who looked disbelieving as it happened. Nor was this the end of it, as Sam-Hulk's legs, just as powerful as Donna had guessed at, jump-kicked Banner's creature in the head not once but twice. Al had a sick feeling he knew why all this was possible.

"His Tae-Kwon-Do is instinctive. Ohh. We have a David Bruce Banner Hulk, and now we have a Sam Bruce Lee Hulk. Does it get any better than this, Lord? Feel free to ignore me on that last one."

The assault continued. Banner's Hulk struck wildly and seemed to be smashing things more easily, but it never landed a blow. Its growls grew louder and angrier, but Sam-Hulk kept tagging it without breaking a sweat. Rabbit-blows to the stomach had Banner-Hulk winded and even seeming to slow down. At last, Sam-Hulk foot-swept the other titan, bringing him to the ground. On him before he could rise again, Sam-Hulk slammed Banner-Hulk in the nose with a tensed opened palm, a lethal blow to anyone but the Hulk. Despite surviving it, Banner-Hulk did not yet stir, its healing needing time to overcome this type of damage. Unsure of Banner's fate, Al aimed at his best friend.

"Sam, you may have just crossed the line. God help us all."

With only one Hulk and that one now standing still, Al had his shot and took it. The tranquilizer dart fired off, traveled the short distance, yet it never struck its target. Al wondered for a moment why he hadn't heard it hit anything. When he saw why, he wished he never had.

"No---way."

Behind him, the remaining Hulk had his arm raised, and his thumb and forefinger raised in a pinching motion. Between them, caught like a pencil picked up from a tabletop, was the tranquilizer dart. The dart was then dashed to the ground amid Sam-Hulk's savage roars. Al dropped his safetied rifle.

"He plucked it out of the air. We got nothing. We got nothing that can stop him. Sam? Please don't destroy your own home. Please?"

But the creature merely ignored him and began to pound pointlessly on the shield surrounding Ziggy's mainframe. Indeed, it was holding up just as it had been designed. It would not yield to any single blow on any spot. The Sam-Hulk stepped back, and spread its large arms to their fullest extent. Al looked on, reloading his rifle in hopes of lucking into a shot the monster wouldn't block.

"What's he doing?"

"Admiral, put on your protective ear-gear immediately!!"

At Ziggy's prompting, Al did just that and ducked for cover. What felt like a sonic boom emerged as Sam-Hulk slammed his giant hands together. The reverb echoed all through Ziggy's shield, causing it to vibrate until it exploded. The supercomputer was now exposed and helpless. As though it knew this as well, the creature turned from Ziggy to a more hardened target. Al spoke on his walkie-talkie.

"Beeksy? You catchin' this?"

Verbena Beeks was now three floors away, with the rest of the staff. But she responded.

"Yes, Al. We all are."

"Why is he targeting Ziggy and the accelerator? In a way, he loves them almost as much as Donna and he wouldn't hurt her."

"Al, the only thing I can come up with is that he is going after the two things that can send him away from home again. He may not be able to calm himself until he smashes them. Add to that, there is sometimes no greater trauma than coming home after a long time away."

Al painfully recalled Beth cowering in terror as a madman threw their possessions around, smashing everything in sight for no discernible reason as the torture inflicted by sadistic Vietcong elite breakers foamed to the surface. Only the super-genius college kid he'd been given to babysit and keep safe stopped Al from attacking the only woman he would ever love.

"Sometimes, it can just be pure hell."

Picking up a piece of jagged shielding from the pile next to Ziggy to use as a bludgeon, Doctor Sam Beckett's Hulk prepared to make the quantum leap accelerator vanish.

-------

Inside David Banner's mind, he saw the cage he had seen so many times in his nightmares. For him, there were no jeering crowds of those he knew he hadn't failed, and no demonic doppelganger of Al or Jack McGee or Helen, or anyone else he'd known. Just what he always saw in that cage, that being the Incredible Hulk. But this time he wasn't avoiding the cage, and this time, the creature wasn't straining to get out. Undoing the chain and opening the door, Banner pointed.

"Come on. We've got to get back up. Sam has to be stopped."

The Hulk did not attack, join with him, or even speak, as it had done with Sam. Instead it merely shook its head, closed its eyes and waved a weak goodbye before fading away for all time, the cage vanishing with him. David cried out as this happened.

"Come Back! Damn you, come back! For years, it's been all I can do to keep you from emerging every time I have a bad nightmare. Now, the one time I really need you to come out, you run away? COWARD!!"

David knew well the absurdity of what he was doing and saying. He also didn't care.

"Is this because I kept you locked up here? Is that why you won't help me--help Sam--our friend?"

Someone emerged from the ether, but it was not the Hulk or Banner.

"That is the eternal problem with relying upon rage, David. For it is always and forever as unreliable as it is addictive."

The gentleman was blind, elderly, Asian, and as well known to David as he was to Sam. Yet Banner was skeptical.

"In some of Sam's memories I saw a malevolent being who likes to pose as Al. How do I know that's not who you are?"

Li Sung smiled gently.

"The devil, you say? Well, perhaps in my youth, when some young ladies were impressed by petty displays of misused skill. But I hope that I have ascended. In fact, I am fairly certain of that. As should you be, David. For you were there when it happened."

Banner knew he was running out of time, and that he had to take a chance.

"Li Sung, did you make the Hulk go away? Can you bring him back?"

Li Sung sat down on a rock that wasn't there before he went to sit.

"Each of us carries with him a savings account of rage, if you will. It builds interest rapidly, and often robs our other accounts till it is all we have. You, David, held an Emperor's fortune in this sad commodity. But now that fortune is squandered. Your rage is gone."

"That's impossible. Even right now, I feel rage at the Hulk for running out on me when I need him most."

Li Sung gently touched Banner's shoulder.

"Did you always fight the power's release? How many times did you risk a bullet for another, knowing that you would not die? How many deadly traps did you walk into with eyes open, knowing that your thuggish captors would soon be cowering in fear? In short, how many times did you fight the change, and how many times did you welcome it?"

David shook his head.

"Of course there were times I counted on my condition to help me and to help others. I was trying to survive. To live long enough to find my cure. That is not a crime."

"No, David. It is not a crime. It was a choice, and all choices have consequences. All who live know rage. But very few see that rage released in any true way. Even those who lash out at others still see no end in sight. If there is a well of universal rage, then your bucket is worn through, and your rope and pulley are badly rotted. You have no more ability to tap its grim waters."

David couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"But I have a lifetime of rage. I know I haven't always handled it as well as I should have, but I've felt it since the day my mother died, and on countless occasions since."

Li Sung was patient, in this place without substance or time.

"You reconciled with your father over her death. Your poor Laura, you have come to realize, was taken in a way that all too many die, and you have come to terms with her loss. Elaina Marks' death you have recently settled. Carolyn Fields was dying when you met her, as surely as I was. The young Texas Ranger killed the fiend who plotted your sister's death, and you destroyed the deadly spore he had intended to release. At long last, your name and honor were cleared, and you vented your rage upon the man who had wronged you, giving him release as well. Finally, you walked again in the company of a man who wished to help you, so long ago, and your arguments were settled. You are now at that point I have always wished for you, David. Your rage and your fear are gone, and you may now control the vast power as you were always meant to."

Li sung nodded.

"You were never my student, and yet you were always my friend, David. So I treasure you just as well. Now hear me. The power is at last in your control, but it must be just as quickly surrendered, the payment you make for saving a life and for overusing your rage, which, like fear and fire, is both deadly and yet necessary. Another, greater power will take its place. Two journeys end. Another soon begins for you. Then, after one last journey while living is undertaken, small eyes will hungrily seek both your knowledge of the sciences and of controlling anger. Well before your life's journey is at last done, you will stand in a spot, and realize with delight that this spot completes and conjoins two great circles. For now, though, you must open your eyes, stand up and look at your hands."

David tried to be polite, though what Li Sung was saying would take him a very long time to comprehend.

"Thank you, old friend. I'll always remember you."

"And I you, David. But first, answer for me this great and intriguing riddle."

"Of-of course."

Confused as to the old man's delays, Banner still owed his memory this courtesy.

"My riddle is this: Why is it, when American men seek out or dream of spiritual mentors, they are always wizened old men from other cultures? What is up with that?"

David laughed when he saw Li Sung smile. Despite all the pain, during his time on the road, Banner had known both good people and good times. He would never permit himself to forget this, ever again.

As instructed, he opened his eyes, and stood up. He looked around, noting that the floor looked farther away. Next, he looked at his hands and gasped. In a voice that was and was not his own, David Banner spoke up.

"Well, this was certainly unexpected."

Over by the accelerator, Al was playing a potentially deadly game. He was standing between the Hulk that Sam had become and the monster's misplaced target.

"Sam, it's me. It's Al. I don't care how much you've changed. I know you won't hurt me. You never could."

Gingerly, the Sam-Hulk held out its right hand and felt Al with its fingers. Its left hand still held the jagged piece of debris it had picked up. Al nodded.

"That's right, Sam. I'm your pal, and you're mine. I--hey, why are you poking me so hard?"

The monster grew angrier each time it felt the very solid Al, until it growled and Al ran away.

"Dammit! I shoulda caught on. With his brain in that state, he thought I was supposed to be just a hologram."

Further enraged by what it saw as a deception, the Sam-Hulk again raised the debris, intending to smash the accelerator. But hands from behind him grabbed the jagged bludgeon. As Sam-Hulk turned and Al looked on in wonder, David Banner tossed the debris up and down like a baseball.

"Looking for something, Sam?"

Al saw Banner speak, but could hardly believe any of his senses as this occurred. For while it was certainly the voice of David Banner speaking, albeit somewhat gruffly, Banner's appearance had decidedly changed.

"He's talking and acting like Banner--but he's still the Hulk!"

The first thing Sam's creature did was attempt more jump-kicks. But rifle-fire from Al struck at its kneecaps, ending this for now.

"Forgive me, Sam. You know I love you, pal."

David punched the other creature twice in the face, but Sam-Hulk merely growled. Al shook his head in the distance.

"C'mon, Banner. Put your back into it! Ahh, ya hit like a She-Hulk!"

David landed an uppercut that seemed to do the trick for the moment. He then pointed at his unwanted boxing coach.

"I'll get him over to the accelerator and hold him. Tell Ziggy to leap us out. It's the only way."

Al waved his hands in the air, to be heard over Sam's growls as he got up for more.

"No can do! You two will still infect who you leap into. Besides, Ziggy can't focus past the gamma energy in your bodies."

David was in his glory, despite the blows he was taking as Sam tried to fight past him. The strength he had wanted for almost two decades was his, and now he had control over it to boot. But Li Sung had said what had to be done. Grabbing Sam-Hulk from behind and bending back his arms, he took the howling nightmare towards the one place it did not want to go without smashing it first. Sam-Hulk reacted like a cat being hurled towards a pool as it was forced near the quantum leap accelerator. But whereas its moves and speed had bested a grunting caveman, a rational scientist and friend now held him fast.

"Al! Tell Ziggy to do something soon. I can't hold him for very long."

The hysterical monster would be free soon, and then it would destroy its targets, one way or another. Calavicci knew that, and he knew that even if Banner fought Sam to a standstill, the vibrations alone might take the place apart.

"Ziggy--you gotta leap them out."

"I am open to suggestions, Admiral. Their gamma energy effectively blocks my sensors from seeing anything else about them."

Al was about to join the others and complete the evacuation when it hit him like a bolt out of the blue.

"If the gamma rays are all you can pick up--then leap those out!"

"Admiral--that is brilliant!"

With that to-be-denied-later compliment ringing in the air, Ziggy activated the accelerator. Energy rose into the air, streaming from both Hulks, arcing alternately blue and green. Ziggy shrieked and circuits inside the accelerator outright popped and smoked. But within a minute of this, Al breathed a sigh of relief. For where had once stood two monsters locked in mortal combat, there were merely two men sitting down in a daze. Sam in particular seemed thrown by his surroundings. Al grabbed up and hugged his friend, returned at long last. He then asked a smug voice he hoped was still there a series of questions.

"Ziggy--how are you and the accelerator doing?"

"We--are--fine, Admiral. There was some damage from the gamma energy's passage, but I made certain it was harmlessly dispersed at a point just past the Earth's exosphere."

"Good going, Zig. What about our guys?"

"It is precisely as we hoped. Doctor Banner?"

David looked up, still quite woozy, but more coherent than the thoroughly exhausted Sam.

"Yes, Ziggy?"

"I am pleased to report that, minus the tendency of the imbedded gamma energy to recharge the mutated cells, so to speak, your altered chromosomes and genes have fully yielded to your baseline structure and chemistry. Congratulations, David."

The supercomputer's meaning was quickly gleaned by the weary scientist. Whatever control he had gained just prior to this, Banner was plainly exultant as he said words he had waited far too long to even contemplate speaking.

"I'm cured. The Hulk is gone. Ziggy? Sam, too?"

"Yes, David. Though Doctor Beckett does seem slightly anemic. But the onrush of incoming well-wishers, not the least of whom is a very anxious Doctor Eleese, should help alleviate that as well."

As the others made like lightning through the three intervening floors for their returned leader, David looked at Al, who had lit up a cigar and was preparing to call Beth, as he had always promised.

"Al?"

"Yeah, Banner?"

Sam got up, and looked around in sheer joy while David kept on.

"I'm cured."

Al smiled and puffed once.

"I know. Congrats. To use the old standby–today the running stops, pal. You get your life back."

Sam nodded in triumph as Al reluctantly released him.

"I'm home!"

Al smiled and puffed twice.

"I know, Sam. Isn't it great? I mean, I don't think the bunch of you combined have enough words for how great it is."

David waved his hand in the air.

"I'm cured, Sam is home, Jack's done with, the project is saved..."

Both Sam and Al looked at him in confusion, and then spoke as one.

"And?"

David shrugged.

"So why haven't I leaped back to 1991?"

Whereas two men had spoken one word before, now three men spoke two words as the well-wishers finally found them.

"Oh, Boy!"


	10. Chapter Nine The Leap Forward

Chapter Nine - The Leap Forward

September 5th, 1999

The celebration began in earnest, as wife kissed husband, and the second most joyous news possible was confirmed before all. Sam held up Donna's hand.

"Ladies and gentlemen...we are having us a baby!"

Donna nodded.

"We ladies will have to do more than just the usual baby shower. We are taking these two stumble-bums in for a whole new wardrobe."

Al leaned over to the two lost-and-found scientists, a grin on his face.

"Bet you boys wish you could go green, right about now, huh?"

David and Sam looked at the rags they were wearing. Sam shook his head.

"Sometimes, it's best to let the whole guy thing go, Al. Ladies--clothe us."

David nodded.

"But no purple pants. I hate purple pants."

Gooshie gave a beaming thumbs-up.

"I'd call this for a major-league mission accomplished. Umm--I can't go shopping with you, though."

Tina shrugged.

"It was part of my power-sharing agreement with his mother. Until we get her on the bus to Florida, she's still his clothier. Ehh. I've dated worse. Ohhh---Welcome Home, Doctor--Doctors!!"

Sammy Jo Fuller approached Sam gingerly, feeling a nervousness she couldn't explain. At least not yet.

"Doctor Beckett--remember me?"

Sam fought the urge to hug his girl, and suddenly even the bare traces of unease Donna felt around Fuller faded away.

"I guess you're just a very memorable sort of person, Sammy."

A giddy feeling of pure joy was in the air, but it was a joy Al felt he had to temper.

"Hold up. I'm happier than anyone- for both of these guys. But before we get seriously snookered--and we will get seriously snookered, have no doubt--we got four major things to work on. First and foremost---why is Doctor Banner still here? Maybe Sam leapt himself back, but then this is his native time. Next--Donna, get Sam to the Doctor. He looks like ten miles of bad road, most of it racetrack. Three, is there anyone in the waiting room? This could be the prelude to a whole new kind of leap. Last---Zig mentioned damage to our silicon highness as well as the accelerator. Find out what happened, because there is no way we're letting that go."

As Donna had said, Al held no official rank within the Project hierarchy proper. But the movement that followed his words proved what else she had said about the regard he was held in. Yet there was one held in still higher regard, and whose explicit and implicit authority superseded everyone's. And now he was back.

"Hey, Ziggy?"

"Yes, Doctor Beckett?"

"Without getting into the damage, is it beyond recovery?"

"No, Doctor."

"Is it going to get worse?"

"No. It was a telling blow, but it was also extremely localized."

Sam nodded.

"Fine. David, you have anything pressing in 1991?"

"Actually, Sam--I have nothing at all. If I am stuck here--I guess it really doesn't matter."

"It matters. But what matters more is that it can wait. Everybody---get out of here. Take care of what you have to, and if you can, be back on November 1st."

Al looked daggers at Sam.

"Say what? Sam, we gotta load of work to do here."

Sam looked to Gooshie in the distance. There was no one in the waiting room. Then he looked back at Al.

"These people--including you, Admiral--have spent about half-a-decade non-stop trying to get me back. Well, I'm back. I want to be with my wife and family, and I can't be alone in that. Al, it's time to stand down. Most importantly---tell Beth to make those pork chops. She knows the ones."

In the midst of the groans, mock-warnings and general hash-settling, David Bruce Banner was happily greeted by his namesake, Jolene Collins' little son.

"Uncle David? Mommy says you're gonna stay around for a while. What're you gonna do, now that you're all cured?"

Banner thought on this. Flowers on his loved ones' headstones was in order, along with a general clean-up of the burial sites after all that time. Getting in touch with Ronald and Amy Pratt, if the older couple were both still alive was a must. They would love Jolene and Davey, he had no doubt. Time with Sam and Donna was certain, after all was settled. For kicks, he decided, Banner might even call Jack McGee's show. And then---

"I don't know, Davey. I guess I never really thought about it before."

David Collins ran to rejoin his mother, his life still very much ahead of him. But David Banner was dead, and had no life to resume. Many of the same conditions that made him keep his survival a secret still applied, despite his no longer being wanted for murder. The same shady if hypothetical types he had always feared would still want to analyze the man who had been the Hulk. The raging spirit within him had been tamed. He had made peace with the Hulk, with himself and his rage. He even had his grail, his cure. But nothing else had changed, he realized. David Banner was believed to be dead, and he had to stay dead.

"And if he is dead, then what does that make me?"

Though his relationship with the great machine had been varied at best, Banner decided to speak with Ziggy briefly, quietly directing that their conversation be kept private.

"What's the damage, Ziggy?"

"Well, David--it would seem that I am bereft of a major program, and that the accelerator is similarly lacking in certain components. Both of the losses involve the locator mechanism, the system by which we track--or should I say tracked--Doctor Beckett's movements and travels through time. Though it only provided the most basic of information, that information was of course vital and fundamental to any number of successful leaps."

Banner nodded.

"How quickly can we rebuild the locator system?"

"We cannot. Both that specialized set of components and the sophisticated program itself were the direct, hands-on creation of Doctor Beckett. The properties and functions and field-building involved are absolutely unique, not only to his genius, but many of his personal beliefs and disciplines. He will be some time, I think, in recreating this system."

David saw the dilemma. For while it was one thing to cast a man on a trip through time, it was surely another to find and keep track of him.

"How was the locator system lost?"

"I was able to protect all of my and the accelerator's more delicate systems, save for the ones needed to safely dispel the gamma radiation drained from the two of you. David?"

"Yes, Ziggy?"

"Be seeing you."

David walked away, finding he had no patience for whatever cute game the super-computer might be playing in this instance. Al gestured for him as he rejoined the others.

"It's settled, Banner. Jolene's place is too small, and Sam and Donna will need some time alone. So you're staying with me and the missus--and the four brat-queens."

"Al, I don't want you going to all that trouble."

Calavicci grabbed him by both shoulders, and looked him in the eye.

"You brought him back to us. You shook things up just enough to make things right again. That makes you worth the trouble."

David didn't argue. For then and there, he was a resident of 1999, a year in which he was just as dead as he was in 1991. What year he was in didn't matter. He would always figure out a way to survive, just as he always had, time and space aside.

-----

September 8th

David felt he should have seen the set-up. Sam and Donna's supposed argument over his encounters with women during the leaps sounded a little too pat, in retrospect.

"Well, suppose I just went out and grabbed every man..."

"Well, why don't you do just that? Cause, lady, you don't have the..."

Donna then walked up and kissed David's brains out of his skull. When she let him go, he sat down in a daze, with Al laughing his head off.

"My--my tonsils."

"Betcha wished they still grew back, huh, pal?"

Before David could get back to his barbecue meal, Sam walked up.

"David, I can't let what just happened go. My wife said you were terrific."

David's eyes went wide as Sam got closer.

"Sam---Sam--keep back. Sam--you are creeping me out--and I'm not even really sure what that phrase means. Sam!"

"Pucker up, Doctor!"

Banner plotted an enormous revenge on the playful couple. A revenge far too complex to be detailed here. Suffice to say it involved the Thanksgiving turkey and the strong suggestion of its less-than-healthful nature.

-----

September 29th

David dropped the coin into the slot. The bells, alarms and whistles all blew their very loudest, three lemons clearly visible in the window. The money flowed and flowed until it seemed all of Las Vegas was paying more attention to this visit than to Banner's last one as the Hulk. Al and Sam stared in wonder as an actual wheelbarrow was brought over, and then another two after that. David Banner for his part merely shrugged.

"I was overdue."

------

October 15th

Mrs. Gooshberg had finally stopped crying as she watched her son dancing with his new wife. Sadly for David and Sam, her breath was no better than her son's, and her choice of subject matter was many tens of times as awkward.

"Well, I just swear by the National Register. I mean, where else are you gonna hear the real news? That frog-boy--well, he's on the loose again. And Stallone sparring with his wife? Why can't he hire a real coach, with all his money? Those other papers lie like rugs, but the National Register...."

Both men shared a single thought as she droned on.

*Where's the Hulk when you really need him?*

-----

November 15th

Donna was showing, and both soon-to-be parents looked radiant. Since Sam was tied up attempting to restore Ziggy and the accelerator, David pinch-hit in an important way.

"Hello, Donna. Oh, who's this?"

Eleese pointed Banner out to her Birth Coach Instructor.

"Terry, this is Sam's cousin, David Beckett. He'll be subbing with me for today."

"Oh. Mister Beckett, can you show Donna how to relax, and keep her pain under control?"

David 'Beckett' smiled.

"I've actually had a little experience in that area, Terry."

"Well, maybe. But unlike Donna, you've never had another person inside of you, straining to get out."

Donna patted David on the back.

"Terry---you'd be surprised just how much David understands."

-----

November 30th

With Sam and Donna fuming and moping after a successful Thanksgiving revenge, David tried to continue the work on the damage caused by his cure.

That is to say--he tried.

"David--please. They'll listen to you."

"Jolene---"

"C'mon. Uncles know everything, remember?"

Banner passed by Sammy Jo as he went.

"Thanks, David."

He muttered and grumbled as he went, finally reaching the feuding Davey and Abby.

"Would not!"

"Would too!"

"Not!"

"Too!"

"Guys--lemme hear the argument, and then I have to get back to work."

After he heard the debate, a David with rolling eyes gave a scientific, reasoned response to it all.

"Okay. First things first. Superman is my close personal friend, and so we would never, ever fight..."

------

December 15th

David was now evading and blocking as many blows as he was taking. Sam looked winded.

"You--must have picked up some of my neurons. You've gotten a lot better."

David would get even better, as he sparred further with Ziggy's holo-shadow routine. But Sam did not look better.

"Doctor Beckett, have they nailed down the source of that anemia yet?"

"It'll pass, Doctor Banner. It'll pass."

"You've been saying that for three months now. Sam, you are ill."

"Mind your own damn business, Doctor."

"I think that I am."

"David, here and now, I am perfectly fine."

"Uh-huh. And I used to turn a light shade of flaming peach."

Sam forced a grin that would fool no one.

"And--you made it look good!"

-----

December 26th

He entered Quantum Leap, shaking his head as though it might fall off.

"All right, Doctor. The holiday season is one you should be enjoying with your very pregnant wife. Sam, you can't stay in the Project for the rest of your life."

Ziggy was in enforced hibernation mode, so Banner had to find Beckett himself.

"Sam! Quit screwing around. I'd like to be anywhere but here, right now. I've been thinking about why you didn't leap into me in the early 70's, and I think I've figured out...Sam?"

Doctor Beckett was not moving. He was barely breathing, and Doctor Banner had trouble finding a pulse. Some quick CPR quickly proved to be not enough. On his cell-phone, David did the only thing he could.

"Al! We need a clearance-approved MD down here at the project ASAP! It's Sam. Never mind what. Just get an MD and yourself down here. I'll do what I can. Yeah. I know."

He was a physician with medical training, the same as Sam. But David wanted a general practitioner in on this, no questions asked. As he moved to stabilize Sam and reactivate Ziggy for what help the computer could offer, David offered up a prayer.

"He gave me my life back. So if there has to be a death today--please take me instead."

All prayers are answered. The only question in any given case was what that answer would be.

David was thankful and grateful but hardly surprised at the speed with which everyone arrived. The MD completed the limited work that David had started, but could not really do much more. Sam, while not comatose, also did not look good at all. His skin was cold and clammy, his breathing shallow when it came. Whether or not the next millennium truly began in 2000 or 2001, it began to seem unlikely that Doctor Beckett would live to see it. The next few days saw the futile struggle of his friends and family to cure him by mortal means.

-----

December 27th

"Gamma Radiation?"

Gooshie shook his head at David.

"He's clean. Your gene thread is also gone from his DNA structure. So it wasn't becoming the Hulk that made him like this."

"The man was struck by an out-of-control investigative reporter's rental car."

Tina shut this down.

"But you wouldn't know that from studying him. Part of why he became Super Ninja Hulk was that Doctor Beckett is just in fabulous shape. He should not be dying in there."

Sammy Jo Fuller felt a sense of dread she couldn't explain, but fought this down.

"Blood-work. EEG's. EKG's. Hair and nail samples. You name it, its negative. His circadian rhythm is off, but that's to be expected, given the exhaustion that's overtaken him. Folks, we have nothing."

Doctor Beeks was working overtime trying to keep the constantly vigilant Al and Donna from burning out as they rotated from Sam's bedside. David was reminded of a tragic singer whose wife miscarried upon learning of his death, though for some reason he couldn't remember who this was.

"Jolene? We need everyone in on this."

If it hadn't been her hero speaking, Collins might have maintained her silence. For what she had to say would not be pleasant.

"One possibility is that all this is the cumulative delayed reaction to the pains and privations Doctor Beckett has suffered over the course of his leaping. Maybe, out here, it doesn't all heal nice and neat, and maybe a man needs to eat and sleep whereas in the time-stream, he didn't. If that's what's going on, then all Doctor Beckett needs is prolonged rest, coupled with dietary and vitamin supplements."

She waited a second to follow-up.

"Another possibility is that Doctor Beckett is no longer able to live outside of the time-stream for extended periods. You can take an amphibian out of a pond, but they still need ready supplies of water. In short, we may have no choice but to place him back in the accelerator, if we wish to maintain his life."

Gooshie gulped.

"But the locator system is still off-line. If we send him in now, we have no way of keeping track of him or maybe finding him ever again. I mean, how often have we dealt with leapers who couldn't or wouldn't talk for some reason? If we don't have that system, we don't have Doctor Beckett."

Tina looked down.

"Locator or no--we can't let him die. But what'll this do to Donna--or Al?"

No one had any words to say after that.

-----

December 28th

Sam's best friend was informed first.

"No way! NO WAY! We only just got him back. Damn you, Banner. You got what you wanted, didn't you? Well, Sam earned his ticket back a few thousand times over. You will get Sam back into that accelerator over my cold, dead body. And the way I feel right now, even ole' Greenskin couldn't get past me on this one!"

------

December 29th

Sam's wife was informed, after Al was calmed down.

"God as my witness, David--I have no idea what to do. If I try and keep him here, he might die. But if we send him back, he may die anyway, or we may lose track of him--or things could just go back to the way they were. I was lying to myself. I hated the way things were. I hated him for being away, and I hated all those women, even if he never slept with one of them. Because they had him, and I didn't. Well, they can't have him anymore. Platonic or orgy-ridden, his time is now my time. But--I really don't have a choice, do I? When have any of us ever had a choice? Fate just taps our shoulder and walks away, right?"

As she sat and tried to gather herself, David repeated one word she had said under his breath.

"Fate."

--------

December 30th

A line was crossed. A young woman was informed of who she really was and how she came to be. Donna pleaded as she spoke.

"Please don't hate us. It was never a joke or anything like that. We just had no idea how to tell you. I mean, except for now, how do you even broach a situation like this? We sure as hell didn't know."

Al went next, striking while the iron was hot.

"You had a life. A real life. And we knew you might resent us for keeping it all back from ya. But kid--how much worse would it be to never have a chance to say goodbye? Cause trust me, I got plenty of people I'll never be able to say it to--including my folks."

Sammy Jo Fuller looked through the sick-room's window, and wept.

"I always thought he was amazing. But what about you, lady? Working beside his child by another woman?"

Donna held her, and thought she felt the child she carried smile at its big sister.

"I thought of it as being near a part of him. How could I hate that?"

Waking suddenly on a cot several suites distant, an exhausted, frustrated David Banner looked around furtively. This time, it had been Laura, Elaina, Carolyn, David's mother, Helen and Sam trapped in that same doomed car, and to make matters worse, it had almost seemed like he could have gotten one of them out. Looking in the mirror, he almost expected to see the Hulk, as he sometimes had when just waking up. But the Hulk was gone. Instead, for the barest of moments, he saw neither David Banner nor the monster that had once been inside of him. The face he saw shocked him, before his own came back.

"Sam?"

David's mind lit on fire, and he nearly laughed out loud. He saw wheels turn, and saw a greater piece of the picture than he had ever permitted himself. It was all so simple, so correct. So obvious. He rose from his bed, certain he knew how to make things right, perhaps once and for all.

"I know what I have to do."

-----

December 31st

They stood around, ready to clothe Sam in the conductive suit and wheel him to the accelerator.

"It's like we're taking him to the guillotine. And look who's not here!"

"Al, you know how many friends he's lost."

"Doctor Eleese, you're wrong. He should be here. Right, Gooshie?"

"Huh? Sorry, Tina. I'm just thinking. Tomorrow, my Ma goes on the bus, and I schedule the throat surgery. Sometimes, your life just won't wait for you anymore."

Al moved to pick up his best friend like a piece of cordwood.

"Let's get this over with. Then I'll chain Banner down until he comes up with the damned locator program."

"Al, stop attacking him when that's not what you really mean!"

The figure in the bed stirred, and looked around woozily.

"Will you all keep it down? Can't you see I'm trying to sleep? Donna, honey--please--just a few hours more?"

They one and all stood stunned for a moment. Then, a quick check showed that Sam's mystery illness had passed as quickly as it had struck. Confused, Sam looked about the dumbstruck assembly, and asked a question.

"Where's David?"

------

December 31st, A few hours prior to Sam's awakening----

David expended the helpless rage he felt over his friend's seemingly imminent demise in two ways. One was achieved by boxing with the holographic shadow of himself that Ziggy cast.

"So how am I doing?"

"While Doctor Beckett's punching and kicking power still far exceeds your own, you, David, have far exceeded his speed and nearly equaled his stamina."

David kept right on going with his physical regimen. For his second way of dealing with Sam's illness was about to come into play.

"I had to learn to move quickly, during all those years away. I walked into too many awkward situations not to."

"Yes, you did encounter more than your fair share of those."

David smiled, now having the opening he needed to start seriously questioning the supercomputer.

"Yes, I did. And that leads me to a theory I've come up with, Ziggy. Could I ask you to speculate openly and candidly on a group of purely hypothetical questions?"

"So long as they are purely hypothetical, I do not see any problem, David."

Switching to the heavy bag in order to work on his acknowledged and ironic weakness in power, David asked his first question.

"If Sam alone were leaping himself, I think he would have come home from time to time. So while he definitely had some control, he didn't have it all. Possible?"

"Indeed. The existence of the unknown force is not fully contraindicated by Doctor Beckett's ability. At worst, it could have been his 'training wheels' when he was new to his task. At best, it might be a full partner in how these leaps were chosen."

David varied his style, ignoring slightly sore hands in favor of what he was doing with Ziggy.

"If there were two partners, could there be three? Could the person being leaped into somehow have some say in the nature and manner of this intervention?"

"It would not surprise me if some hyper-conscious level of consultation or gestalt existed between the three players in this speculative scenario, David."

Banner severely doubted whether the computer would answer these questions directly, so the game continued.

"When I asked Sam if he wanted me, in 1991, to prevent him from leaping in the first place, he told me no, citing concern for all those he had managed to help over the years."

"That is consistent with what we know of Doctor Beckett."

"You're right. That's classic Sam. It also struck a chord with me. Because if Sam had leaped back into me to prevent Laura's death, I would likely never have become the Hulk. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have been on the run. And I also managed to help a lot of people. People I now realize are more precious to me than any early cure. In a way, it was trying to change Laura's death that got my life into a ditch in the first place. So rather than go that route again, could I have chosen in my way to have Sam leap into me when he did?"

The supercomputer's response was quick, and telling.

"Given the variables you have provided, David, I must say that your theories are quite sound."

David bypassed logic and chose to read the machine's iffy answers as real ones. It was time, as was said, for a leap of faith.

"I'm not done yet. Ziggy, if this advanced gestalt or level of communication between the troika of Leaper, Leapee and Unknown exists, could a sophisticated enough device be able to detect and/or communicate with it in some form?"

There was a brief silence, then Ziggy said something astounding.

"I believe that the term Admiral Calavicci would use at this juncture is--Busted."

David closed his eyes, and breathed in. It was everything he could have hoped for.

"Ziggy, I'm not upset. I think you did the right thing. I'm guessing it's not an exact science, right?"

"David, the process involved is so far from precise, it causes me to doubt this--entity's--more grandiose claims about its role in creation. I had no words to describe it that would have been of any use to the Project staff. Also, I was directed that, unless this were reasoned out, I was to remain silent or lose my connection."

David said words he found hard to believe.

"I won't betray your confidence. But I need to know for certain. Sam is no fish out of water, right?"

"I have not been made privy as to the exact cause of Doctor Beckett's illness. But nor do I believe that he simply cannot survive outside of the time-stream. That is to say, it is not he who is seeking it out."

David went for broke. One way or another, he would save Sam.

"No. It's Time that's seeking him out. Time that's demanding that there be a leaper. Am I right?"

"I do not believe that it must be Doctor Beckett. But his prior presence filled a void that must now be filled again. Once it is, I have every reason to believe that Doctor Beckett will make a full recovery."

David Banner nodded, and made a choice that would alter time and space, not once but many times over.

"Ziggy, let's get to filling that void."

In short order, David was fitted with the specialized suit, scanned biometrically on hundreds of levels, and shown exactly what to do when the powering sequence was done with. But as he approached the accelerator, a sound of clicking came up behind him. He shook his head without turning to look.

"Al, either shoot me or walk away. Because I have a date with a quantum tachyon generator/inverter, and she doesn't abide tardiness."

"Banner, don't do this. I heard the cockamamie story Ziggy fed you. But even if it's true, you can't be the one to go. It's my job."

David now did turn. He doubted Al had heard the whole story, or the confrontation would not have been happening.

"You have a family, Al."

Calavicci put the gun away.

"Donna made me turn in the bullets, anyway. David---let me be the one who saves Sam. I owe him my life. My life and the life I have now. I was assigned to babysit this stupid liberal egghead do-gooder because he was so valuable, and he ended up babysitting me. We were a sight. Him the short-haired hippie-type, clean and sober, and me the long-haired snarling stereotype vet, drunk and probably high a few times to boot. But Thank God that stupid kid wouldn't listen when I said to go away. He held that long-hair when I needed to hit the porcelain--and he kept Beth from just walking out on a monster she couldn't recognize anymore. I need to pay that debt back."

David wasn't buying.

"You have repaid him. Many times over. I'm still going in, Al."

"Wait! I don't just owe him. I owe you. I owe you both from way back."

"How? I'm not sure we met even once during the 70's. How can you owe me?"

Sam and the others arrived as this was playing out, and Al explained his statement.

"It's all my fault, don't you see? Sam had to choose to help one of us. Two winners like we were woulda been too much, even for the boy scout. So he chose me, instead of you. Because he did, you got off track and became the Hulk. Because he did, there wasn't a second major-league grand-slam egghead on board to keep PQL from losing hold of Sam. My life, my happiness, my family were all purchased with your blood! I can't live this way anymore. Beth and the girls need me, but I need to do this. I can't stay in this kind of life-debt without making a major payment."

David folded his arms over his chest.

"Kaka, Admiral. Pure Kaka. Sam chose you because I didn't offer him a choice. He knew that you didn't mean it when you tried to kick him out of your life. He also knew that I did mean it. So he left. And we three went our separate ways. And you know what else, Admiral?"

David put his hands on Al's shoulders and smiled.

"Things happened exactly as they were meant to. I never thought I'd believe that, but I do. I was meant to get here, to this spot, at this moment, and be headed exactly where I'm headed. So permission to feel any further guilt about it is denied. Got me?"

Al looked at him.

"No, I don't get ya. And I'm kinda sorry I won't have the chance to, outside of the imaging chamber. You're one of the greats, David Banner. On some lists, I might even rank you second. Say--what about Jolene, and Davey? You still got family, Mister."

David walked over to the woman he had helped, so long ago.

"Didn't you tell them?"

Jolene hugged her hero, then picked up her son.

"George called. He brought me a sizeable back-support check, and said that, under whatever conditions I lay down, he wants to be a part of our lives again. That is, after a certain nosy Knight found him and read him the riot act!"

David smiled. It wasn't happy-ever-after, but it was closer than it had been.

"What are surrogate fathers for?"

Davey smiled.

"My Daddy's coming home!"

Abby Fuller tried to top her friend.

"So? I just got a granpa, and Aunt Donna is my grandma!"

Donna rubbed the top of Abby's head.

"No dear. I'm still Aunt Donna. And there's gifts in it for you, if you remember that."

Time travel aside, Donna Eleese had no desire to be 'grandma' before she was 'Mommy'.

Sam walked over to David. He did not say how now that he was recovered, David was to be spared the leap. He did not argue over locator or recovery systems, or the skills a leaper needed. Instead, he asked something far more important.

"David, is this what you want?"

Banner paraphrased a fabled goodbye speech from one of their favorite book series.

"Sam, the time has come for you to stop wandering. You can't have adventures all your life. You have a family, and you have people that need you. We will meet again, but I have another journey to make, and it lies just ahead of us."

Beckett looked teary-eyed, and hugged his friend. David nodded when they were done.

"I was afraid you were gonna try and kiss me again."

"Pal--I don't like you or Tolkien quite that much."

Each had their chance to say goodbye to David Banner in turn. Then, he and Sam finalized the settings.

"Funny how I got better at the exact moment you decided to do this."

"Isn't it, though? Sam, this was once your dream. Are you sure?"

"Donna and these people are my dream, now. David--we may never get you back. Conditions can change so that all we know about leaping could suddenly not apply. It's happened before."

"Sam, you have the Project, and its right for you. This is right for me. A chance to do what I've come to love--help people--minus the Hulk. I've never been more ready, and that's even if I never come back."

Everyone watched in awe as David entered the accelerator's base module. Sam held his wife in one hand, and hit the final switch with the other.

"Get ready to leap, David."

The energies rose like the climax of a great symphony played by a celestial orchestra--and then Doctor David Banner, physician, scientist, having found hidden strength in a joy that all humans can have--vanished. Sam then remembered something.

"Ziggy, send an e-mail to our Congressional liaison..."

"Already done, Doctor. I have informed Congress that Doctor Banner's illness required sending him back into the quantum field, and that the project will need to continue to guide his movements. Movements that - ahem - we still require a working system to fully track?"

"Can I create a supercomputer or what?"

Gooshie pointed.

"Doctor Beckett--the waiting room!"

They virtually flew over, an odd-looking crowd of tired but happy people. In the waiting room was a man who looked like, but was most definitely not, David Banner.

"Uhh--where am I? Cause I gotta start flyin' those good ole' boys out before the storm hits. No, sir. You do not want to be over those cornfields when it gets all frosty. Comes to be a guess what'll give out first--the engine or the wings."

Sam was direct.

"Sir--what date is today?"

Banner's face looked at him like he was crazy.

"Last I checked, it was February 4th, the year of our Lord Jesus Nineteen-Hundred and Fifty-Nine! Why? You been into the wrong bottle, son?"

Sam and Al realized immediately. Donna caught on next. As the man in the chamber was talked through his confusion, Donna gave Ziggy a request.

"Ziggy, internally cycle through all the songs of Don McLean. And tell us if anything changes."

-----

FEBRUARY 4TH, 1959

David saw the coin rise. The younger of the four men smiled in triumph as it came up his way.

"Oh, man! I never won anything before in my life."

Another young man, bespectacled and happy-looking, spoke to one of his friends.

"Sorry, Waylon. Guess you and Dion'll take the bus to KC. See ya there."

A slightly older man shivered as he entered the small charter plane.

"Oh, baby--that is NOT what I like!"

The manager of the group gestured to David.

"Now, those teeny-boppers in Kansas City are waiting on these three. You get em' there good and fast, got it? And give em a gentle ride. It's not every pilot gets to carry talent like Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and JP Richardson."

Inside the plane and waiting for a dumbstruck, slightly confused David the three musicians started harmonizing for fun.

"All of my love--all of my kissin--you don't know what you've been a missin'---"

David realized where and when he was at last.

"Oh, Boy!"


	11. Chapter Ten Decade

Chapter Ten - Decade

There is a great and vast truism in life, one learned well by both the staff at Project Quantum Leap and its new leaper, Doctor David Banner. Very simply put, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

-----

1970/2000 - March 5th - Maine

She had been an impressionable child, and now she was an impressionable adult. She had seen 'Rosemary's Baby' several times in the last year. What had been chilling entertainment for some had chilling consequences in her real life, as well as the very real life she now sought to destroy.

"Don't come near me, Joseph! I have to spill our child's blood, here and now. I won't abide it growing up possessed by Satan. All the signs are there."

She held a large knife near their young son's chest. David strained to find a way to persuade her to drop it and let the child go. In the original history, the child's death had driven the father to murder his wife in a rage, and caused him to spend the rest of his life in mental care.

"Maddy, you don't want to do this. If you do, then the only one who wins is Satan. In fact, I pray to Saints Samuel and Peter that my good wife sees the raging spirit leave our boy!"

That was all the cue that the observing Sam needed. Doing as David had done with Peter Parker and Jack McGee, he bounced the holographic signal off of David and the little boy. Aided by Maddy's psychosis, he caused the distraught woman to see something horrid emerge from her child.

"The devil is---green?"

The holographic Hulk roared. David seized the crucifix Maddy had cast aside when she felt that her own makeshift abjuring had failed.

"Get thee from my wife and child, filthy one. Errr--flex if you acquiesce!"

Sam rolled his eyes but had the image do just that, then fade out entirely. Maddy dropped the knife. The little boy ran to David, this despite his earlier fear of this man he knew wasn't his father.

"She scares me. Make her go away."

"Hey, she's not going away. That's Mommy."

Maddy picked up the knife again.

"He's right, Joseph. The devil I sensed was within me. Like my father always said. I have to go away."

Before she could harm herself, David knocked the knife away with his crucifix.

"Then fight him. With our help. With medical help. But don't let him have your soul, honey."

With Maddy sedated till the next day and the child asleep and under David's guard, Banner glared at Sam.

"Where the hell were you, all that time? I needed your guidance, and you were where, exactly?"

Sam looked and felt exhausted. But he smiled.

"It's a boy, David. Donna had a boy!"

A small bit of heartbreak, both from his own and from Al's perspective as observer, assaulted Sam with Banner's next words.

"Donna--who? Sam, what are you talking about?"

Later, as he held tiny Donald Albert Beckett in his arms, Sam wondered anew if he had made the right choice in letting Banner go in his place. Donny's cooing made short work of that thought. The former leaper was home, and he would remain home. The only if in his mind was, given all that had changed as well as all they now knew, whether they could bring David home.

--------

1981/2001 - VERY LATE SUMMER - The Caribbean

Al had led the children safely away, and David had exposed the fanatical young leader as the closet racist he was, seeking to have his 'lesser' followers all die while he lived to recruit anew.

"David, I gotta go."

"But don't you feel it, Al?"

"Feel what?"

"The feeling like we've turned back madness itself? I know, this is only one cult, and it's not quite Guyana, but still, grabbing the reins back from lunatics like these makes it all worthwhile."

"Get ready to leap, Banner."

"Al, what's wrong...?."

Breathing hard as David vanished, Al exited the imaging chamber, and there saw Sam and Donna waiting for him. Abby was baby-sitting her 'Uncle' Donny. He asked, dreading the answer.

"The Towers?"

Sam looked up, as though pleading with creation.

"They're both down."

Donna took Calavicci's hand.

"Al, they hit the Pentagon."

-----

1952/2002 - November 15th - Massachusetts

David couldn't believe his ears.

"Forget it, Sam. No!"

Beckett felt he had to do this for his friend's sake.

"David, in this era, mob influence on labor unions wasn't just an accusation. These are rough customers."

"I remember the hearings. Now you hear me--NO!"

"All I'm saying is you'd better prepare yourself. In order to successfully finish this leap, you have to protect the witnesses. To do that, you may have to kill the hitmen sent after them."

David looked as angry as he ever had, since being cured of the Hulk.

"The monster never killed. Neither will the man."

"David, I know it's abhorrent. But I've killed."

"In case you haven't noticed, Sam--I'm not you!"

-----

2063/2003 - April 4th - The Northwestern United States

David turned to Donna as she followed him through dense forest growth.

"How--how is it I'm in a year that I'd have to be one-hundred and twenty to be around for?"

She shook her head.

"Sam's theory is a theory, after all. It could be that the 'thread' of your life persists so long as the barest potential for you to be alive does, as well. Besides, your physiology is not exactly that of a sixty-year old man, David."

He looked around; trying to make sure they were alone.

"Okay. So I gained a kind of cellular stasis during my years as the Hulk. But Sam never ended up in the future."

"Yet it was always a possibility. Ziggy can't help us. The leapee is paranoid and won't talk. None of the people you're working with were alive in our time. Doctor May Parker is on her way, but she was a teen in our time."

David breathed in.

"Everyone mentions a war, but they say nothing specific about it. And this drunk, Cochrane? He just keeps to his own counsel on everything. I--Donna?"

The hologram began to fade out. She hit the hand-link, looking more like Al than her husband.

"David--Ziggy---indicating--presence---other---time travel--"

As she faded, David heard the report of a kind of rocket attack. Running back to the encampment, Banner stopped dead in his tracks. What looked like a zombie turned towards him. Its aspect was hideous, wiring and metal lining its pale face. One hand was apparently replaced by a prosthetic claw. David backed away as it came towards him. He gulped.

"Errr--Don't Make Me Angry?"

In the coldest voice David had ever heard, the thing seemed to respond in stereo without moving its lips.

"Anger is irrelevant."

-----

1944/2004 - May 5th - A US Army base near London, England

David ordered the two sides to back off. The small dance floor looked likely to break out in combat a month before the deadlier version hit Omaha Beach. One recalcitrant private pointed at the man he thought David to be.

"Lieutenant, you better decide whose side you're on, and I mean really fast!"

Al appeared in the imaging chamber as Banner gave an answer perhaps typical of him.

"I'm on the American side, Phillips. Yourself?"

"He was dancing with a white woman!"

Private Jenkins would, in David's time, merely be called for what he was, a man with a forceful personality who was not shy about making his opinion known. But in 1944, a black man was not a man at all in the eyes of some, and forceful was not the word used to describe him, even by some of the other African-Americans in his unit.

"Last I checked, we were fighting to help keep the British ladies free, same as the men. But Phillips has one point right, Lieutenant. You're big on words, and telling him he's wrong. Stopping some of the so-called 'pranks' against my unit, though? On that score, I'd say your side is already very much apparent."

David closed his eyes, then opened them and looked around.

"Right now, I'm choosing the officers' side, and confining you all to quarters for the rest of the night. Any grumbling and it will be for the whole weekend. I trust I am known and understood?"

The dispersal was silent, but full of potential deadly, Omni-directional glares. Some of Phillips' unit castigated him with mumbles of 'just dancing', and some of Jenkins said things to him like 'don't get them started', but David did not see that as anything helpful.

"You're doing all right so far, David. Just remember that this is a hierarchy, and you're above them all. That's half the battle, right off."

"Al? What about the other half?"

He hit the hand-link.

"Zig says that all this tension isn't just preparatory jitters--especially since most of them don't know about--ya know."

At first, Banner wondered why Al was being circumspect about D-Day, and then realized anew that it was not impossible for someone else to see and/or hear the observer. Had Sam mentioned tightening all that up? Like other things, such matters were often hard for him to recall.

"David, there's a 65% chance that this unit has a Nazi infiltrator working it, looking to split things apart using race. Probably an expert, to boot. Be hard to find."

David shook his head.

"If there's one thing I know for a fact, Al--Swiss-Cheese or No--it's that hidden monsters eventually bubble to the surface. It's what they do. But what about–bigger events?"

"Ziggy says it's like 2 percent that this guy would even accidentally stumble onto it, let alone his finding someone who knows and is willing to talk. Remember, even Ike and his circle weren't sure at this point."

D-Day was safe, and would remain so for this leap. But outside, in defiance of his orders, David saw Phillips talking to Jenkins. Jenkins looked shocked.

"You're what? Are you serious?"

Phillips nodded.

"Most folks didn't know my family was mulatto. Look, Jenkins. I've always passed easy, even when I tanned during the summer. But my cousin couldn't. One day, he and a white girl exchanged smiles--just smiles. They had him strung up so fast, they never even asked me why I was talking with him. Don't get the nut-burgers in this unit to going. It's not just your neck on the line, if they start digging through records."

David heard a shaken Jenkins agree to avoid mixed dancing, till things calmed down. But Banner correctly doubted this was the end of it.

------

1985/2005 - November 18th - Texas

David threw Helen to the ground. The shot rang out, but missed her entirely. Moving like lightning, he caught and threw out the explosive device that he knew was to be fired into her lab seconds later. The small pond outside was destroyed, but David Banner had saved his sister's life.

Unlike in the original history, he sat and listened to her, and not a lawman offering cold comfort, explain why she was targeted.

"Remember the process we developed, to force harmful insect larvae to full maturity, so as to protect crops from their appetites?"

"Of course. You sold the patent for quite a bit, if I recall correctly."

Helen looked in raw rage at her broken window, and at the once-peaceful pond beyond it.

"The company I sold it to decided to see if it could be useful to–induce abortions in humans. Greedy pieces of---well, the tests showed it would be toxic to all concerned if used at levels that could affect a pregnant woman. End of story, right? Wrong. I'm still its listed developer, which someone working for the company fed to certain people with, shall we say, strong and even extreme beliefs on abortion. For developing a product that I would never want to use on humans, that didn't even get past the preliminary trials, I'm now the target of these groups I never heard of, saying I've offended God. Oh, David. After Dad died, I came to Texas to get a new start. But I swear, some of my neighbors don't even corroborate these attacks to the police."

"Do any of them?"

"Yes, of course. But everyone is scared, and I guess I'm just edgy myself, now. I suppose every area has lunatics that maraud, and fools that protect them. I just wasn't expecting any of this. Well, at least you're safe--and I guess I am, while you're here."

David puzzled at this.

"How's that?"

Helen smiled.

"My brother has a--unique sort of temper. You know. Grraarghh!!"

David winced at that. At first, he had been happy that Ziggy had isolated his 1985 self, so as not to reinfect him in the present. Though he had no desire to resume his nightmare, he now wondered how all the changes would play out without the Hulk's presence. At moments, it had been critical to the survival of all concerned.

"Helen, the transformation at times can be unpredictable. So let's not count on it, okay?"

She nodded.

"Probably a good idea. Listen, I'll cook up some chicken cutlets. You clean up, hero."

Once the shower and a small radio were running upstairs, David cleaned up while speaking with Sam.

"Why haven't I leaped yet?"

"Because Helen is still in danger. All you've done so far is extend her life by a few days--and endanger the life of another. According to Ziggy, someone sent to protect her now also dies, trying to save her, whereas, in the original history, all he had to do was avenge her."

David rinsed out his hair.

"Don't worry, Sam. I'll kill if I have to, this time. And I'll do it gladly."

"I am worried. David, I may not have a moral leg to stand on here, but where you're treading can prove very, very dangerous. You can do harm, as well as good."

David put on a robe.

"You're right, Sam. You don't have a moral leg to stand on. Helen Banner lives. End of discussion. Just keep my past self sedated and in a room with relaxation discs and I'll provide the rage for these Bible-thumping bigots."

Sam shook his head.

"Not a great attitude to go in with. Especially not in this part of the country. David, there are a lot of sincere people who depend on their faith to see them through a fair batch of misery."

"Those people aren't my problem--unless they decide to aid my sister's killers out of some misguided reading of some obscure passage of the Gospels. But if they keep their silence or worse in this, then they will know a new definition of misery."

"How can you say that? David, you know what I said is true. You've depended on small-town America as a survival route, for pity's sake!"

David finished getting dressed.

"That I have. And you know what I found out, Sam? Corruption or cynicism, Faith or Good Works, neither big city nor small town own anything outright. Except that city people are at their worst when they think they're the only smart ones, and small-town folk are at their worst when they think they're the only ones with any faith. Both illusions need to be punctured once in a while. And I'm the man with the pin."

As he left, Sam kept to himself the thought that said pin had punctured Banner's heart. David walked downstairs, where Helen was not alone. She looked at David and spun a lie meant to protect a dead brother.

"Ranger, this is my cousin, Bruce. I asked him to stay with me as an extra set of eyes, till this crisis passes."

The lawman, sporting a moustache and a Ranger's hat, rose to shake David's hand.

"Seems you also have a sixth sense, Bruce. Your cousin mentioned how you spotted the boys from Posse Dei just in time. However you did it, keep it up. They play for keeps, and some unfortunate souls in this area think that somehow their tactics protect the innocent unborn."

Banner tried hard to remember Sam's words about not lumping in all people of faith with a few lunatics. But the lawman's words about the unborn pulled up something reminiscent of the Hulk itself. If pressed, and if he sensed that the lawman's loyalties were divided, David Banner would protect his already-born sister, consequences be damned.

"Some people don't know how to control their righteous rage, Ranger—?"

"Ranger Cordell Walker, Bruce—what did you say your last name was again—?"

------

1976/2006 - July 4th - New York

David had at first wanted to kick Sam, Al and Donna where it counted. The new observer should never have been sent in, and been exposed to this kind of ugliness. Yet it had very quickly become apparent that she was a natural. After all, this sort of work was in her genes.

"Tommy, it's me, Abby. Just tell Uncle David who hurt you, and then they can be punished."

Only Abby had been able to permeate the shell the withdrawn little boy had pulled himself into, his held-back pain driving him into a state capable of seeing her. But now they were up against a brick wall.

"Uncle David? He won't talk anymore, even to me. What'll we do?"

Banner let the neurons of the psychiatrist he had leaped into do the work.

"Abby, you stay with him while I let his parents back in. I have a feeling I've been led around. You call me when you think the time is right. Okay?"

Up until then, David had always punctuated his suspicions by calling out first, before entering whatever room Tommy and his parents were in. Now, he decided to use his extra set of eyes in a manner both were uncomfortable with. It didn't take long.

"Uncle David? His parents. They're both crazy!"

The father was holding the squirming Tommy down, while the mother offered up worthless platitudes. By not calling out first in concern, David had bypassed their nearly professional cover job once and for all. Banner paused, uncertain that they wouldn't simply kill the boy. The father's concerned facade had fallen away to nothing in one last assault.

"Stop it! In some cultures, it's how a parent shows love! Can't you just once let me show you the kind of open affection I want to?"

The mother proved where her concerns lay. They lay with appearances. Not with her child.

"Tommy, we can't have these complaints. Do you want to ruin our family, have people speak about us, like we were one of *those* families?"

Abby watched with pleasure as David closed his eyes and exited the psychiatrist. The ability Sam had demonstrated once or twice unconsciously, Banner had made his own. Reappearing as Tommy, he angrily shook off the very sick parents. The father he punched in the stomach. The mother he slapped across her face. The psychiatrist knew some of went on, but for then and there just stood confused. David grabbed up both parents, who were stunned that an abused little boy was tossing them around so easily. They would live to get help, but their perfect facade died that day. David took the hidden syringe from 'his' mother's hand, and quickly forced a half-dosage on each parent.

"Mother--let's really give the neighbors something to talk about."

Banner needed no observer or hand-link to tell him these people weren't going to hurt this child, ever again.

-----

1967/2007 - June 30th - California

Drummer Fontana Buckingham was known as 'Nooner' by the other members of The Wavefronts. Some said this was because he was known to take naps at noon. Others said this was because his brain went to sleep at noon, whether he did or not.

"Oopsie-daisy--wouldn't ya know it?"

Wearing his aspect, David Banner seemed determined to prove the latter theory, as he tossed their keys over the cliff. Lead Singer Valentine 'Vallie' Black shook his head in disbelief.

"Nooner! Now how are we supposed to get back?"

They were in some seriously forested country. Getting back to the coast highway on foot was next to unthinkable.

"I guess we can't."

Bass guitarist Jay 'Clapper' Nacremia was ready to kill.

"Dude, we were supposed to meet at Brian Wilson's house tonight. The Beatles might even show up. And maybe the guy who manages Elvis? Do you know what we might get from attending a party like that? The connections we might make? The kind of stuff we might get into?"

In the original history, the Wavefronts one and all died of substance overdose in the space of one week in August 1977, their deaths overshadowed and forgotten as the nation mourned the fallen King of Rock and Roll.

"I know just the sort of connections we might have made."

Organist Jesse 'Hurdy-Gurdy' Aaron asked a pointed question of his drummer.

"What do we have to do to get you to stop playing baby-sitter, man?"

David produced pens and notepads from the old car.

"You all hate me so much for riding you? I'll back off if you just sit here tonight and make some songs worth showing to all those great people. If we're all agreed that they're all good, you go where you wanna go, and do what you wanna do. No hassle from me ever again."

They were there for five days and nights, and produced that one classic album. The one that's always mentioned right after Sgt. Pepper, Pet Sounds and a few others. The one that kept them playing for years, and had people wondering why, as they became a staple on the revival circuit, they had never hit it super-big. A grandfather as the new century approached, Valentine Black finally told the story of how Nooner had saved them from drugs and such by arrogantly tossing their car keys over a cliff, forcing them to make that one great piece of music before they made the connections.

"Nooner. Yeah, man. He was the first to leave us. Maybe it was that damned brain tumor made him see a bad future for us, and set it all right again."

-----

1998/2008 - February 28th - Scotland

David never had and never would learn the true name of the aging MI-5 agent he had leaped into. He only knew that a great country had avoided, at least for the foreseeable future, a scandal that would have brought it low on many levels. The lunatic nationalist struggled in his arms, and looked plaintively at the Prince Of Wales.

"Sir--it is just as it was with Henry the Second. He wished to be rid of his turbulent priest. So you and your blessed mother surely wished to be rid of that low-born traitor!"

Whatever criticisms and accusations could and would be laid at the steps of the tall prince, for then and there he stood as a King.

"I am sorry that somehow you and your 'Dragonus Defensor Britannia' took my words of displeasure with my ex-wife to mean that somehow I wished my children's mother to be executed. Tell me, what sort of kingdom would I or they rule, if you had succeeded? Guards, take this maniac from my sight."

The woman in question looked at her former husband.

"I wish to thank you for your efforts on my behalf."

He walked out without looking at her.

"I wish that you would not."

She shook her lovely head.

"So odd a thing, in one moment, to see the reasons I married him as well as the reasons I found I could not stay married to him. I think I better splash my face. Will you wait for me?"

David nodded.

"Always, Ma'am."

Invisible to all but David since the upgrades had been installed, Jolene held up the hand-link.

"Sorry, David. She still dies in six months. Same conditions. And she's too flustered right now to take in any sort of warning."

"Then why was I here? My God, Jolene. If I wasn't here to stop that death too, then what have I done?"

David knew in his heart that, whatever accusations were made against her royal in-laws after the limousine accident, the scandal resulting from this death could have torn a powerful nation apart, leading to chaos on both sides of the Atlantic. But it didn't help. Jolene did, though.

"What you've always done. Saved the princess from the dragon. That's what knights are for, you know. Be ready to leap very soon."

Jolene vanished. As David began to feel the tug, his Princess spoke to him again.

"You know, ever since you were assigned to me, I've wanted to ask you about that horrid time you spent in that ghastly place. Do you mind?"

"You can ask me anything--Diana."

"Anything at all?"

"I just said you could."

"Alright, then--here goes--"

As David was pulled away, he received certain information about his leapee as she asked her question. His eyes went wide.

"Why *did* you resign?"

-----

1949/2009 - September 1st - Michigan

With an explosive enthusiasm that would seem madness in anyone else, Wilfred 'Bill' Bailey stood before the men he alternately admired and despised. David, in the form of his sidekick, stood beside Bailey as always.

"Yes, sure. Gas is cheap and plentiful now. But what about the future? Those Texas fields can't keep producing forever, the drills done in Alaska are questionable at best, and the places we're coming to depend on? Well, all you have to do is break open a history book and see that area of the world as being close to inherently unstable."

One of the so-called Big Three obviously had his mind already made up against Bailey.

"Young man, you are offering some fairly narrow bleatings against a future that's not yet formed and history that's long dead. American power will keep those distant wells flowing for as long as there's oil under those sands. Your engine, like your vehicle, is unnecessary."

The second of the three was not quite so dismissive, but no less inclined to change history.

"I think Mister Bailey may be reading the tea-leaves correctly in the broad sense, but that he's off on the details. If and when we get put up against that wall, it'll be just the same as in the Industrial Revolution and then again just after Pearl Harbor. America plays catch-up like nobody's business. We can do it again."

The third member of the capitalist Troika cast an askance eye on the other two, whom he was between in age.

"Well, if you two aren't bright enough for this business, I am. I'm hiring this lunatic for myself. But Bill? Son, I'm afraid that, right now, an engine that gets a hundred miles to the gallon would just wreck certain aspects of the international economy--possibly even aid the Communists. Old Joe Stalin would just love jeeps and tanks that didn't need to stop quite so often. So let's let Bailey's Comet go the way of the wind, and talk turkey about your position in my firm."

A drained Bailey seemed set to surrender entirely, when David spoke up.

"Sir? Mister Bailey has to put forward a small condition. It's a deal-breaker, I'm afraid."

"You've a nerve, Bailey. But let's hear it, then."

Bailey looked at David, wondering what he was up to. David nodded at the third man.

"Mister Bailey always said that he could not give up until he had sold at least three models of his car, knowing that someone somewhere had his vehicles and could enjoy them."

"Cookie, what are you doing to me?"

"Trust me, Bill. Sir?"

The man shook his head.

"It can't be done. The terms I'm offering of course include suppression of Bailey's Comet. It cannot be otherwise."

David raised a finger.

"It can, sir. It can--if you yourself buy them."

"Me?"

"Yes, sir. Buy them--and put them in your private auto museum. Gossip says it's quite extensive. That would keep the Comet off the market, fulfill Mister Bailey's dream, and give you quite the conversation piece."

The man guffawed.

"That it would! Bailey, your little assistant is hiding a Titan inside those overalls. Be sure and use some of what I'm paying you to bring him along."

Bailey shook the hands of his friend and his new employer.

"You know it, sir! I may be crazy–but I ain't stupid."

The other two CEO's left satisfied the 'threat' had passed. Bailey shook hands with his new employer.

"I surely will, sir. But I can only have two models, straight off. To get the third, I'll have to strip my 1931 Ascot Q. Too bad. Runs beautifully, after my modifications."

"You--you made my Ascot Q work? But it was a disaster. The excess heat!"

"Just replaced the tank with a smaller one, and increased the fan size by 50%..."

While the two auto-philes talked shop, David asked Al a question.

"So what happens?"

"Well, by the time the first gas crunch hits, Bailey's Senior VP in Development. He already knows how to make more efficient cars, so his company survives without a bailout. Gives them a leg up. Then, in 2007, the big guy's great-grandson opened up his private museum. Let's just say that nobody's looking to suppress Bailey's Comet anymore. The tests with the Comet engine in a hybrid electric setup are blowing people's minds. Some are talking a Kilometer per gallon. So you put it in safe storage till people were ready. Now--are you ready?"

"I'm ready to try, Al."

David closed his eyes, and concentrated on an image in his mind. But for some reason, it was not the lab at Project Quantum Leap. Al exited the chamber, and looked at Sam, helping Donny with his homework.

"Is he here?"

Beckett left his boy alone and whispered to Calavicci.

"Al, there's no one in the waiting room."

"No David?"

"No David--and no leapee!"

Concerned, the two men decided to forego their usual favorite phrase. Instead, they cleared the project of non-essential personnel and began to search for David Banner.

------

January 22, 1943 - That certain place

David walked the streets of a town that seemed like every town he had ever wandered through. Without knowing why, he turned a series of corners, and then, on one street, he saw the tavern.

"Nothing feels right. But everything does."

He entered, and it looked like a very comfortable little place. A main kitchen could be viewed in back, but a small grill lurked behind the bar for quick snacks and small meals. David Banner had always had a vision of what a tavern should look like, and somehow, this was it. He sat down by the bar, and heard people milling about behind him. Seemingly, there were hundreds of people, but he saw only a few when he turned to look. In the bar's mirrored wall, though, he clearly saw the hundreds. And he saw more.

"This isn't possible."

Sam was there. In fact, all kinds of Sam Becketts were there, including a Sam who looked more like Tom Beckett, and a woman who, no mistake this time, was Katie. Al was there to the nth power, some with cigars, some with cigarettes, and some looking disgusted by all the smoke. A man who had a very British look and bearing sat about himself, taking it all in several times over. Donna was present as well, talking with an unseen companion.

"No, Beth. NO! Noooo---I do not want to hear what a man's shoe size ties in with. BETH!"

As David's hold on reality grew shakier still, he saw himself. He was seated with his older magician friend from so many years before. He was seated comforting a small boy who had received very bad news. He was seated with Peter Parker. He was getting woozy.

"Please--whatever I've done. Don't make me die crazy."

At the mirrored room's far fringes, it grew worse. He saw Helen. He saw Gooshie, and Tina. Verbena's absence didn't surprise him, since she confessed to him that adventurers were best admired and not emulated, as far as she was concerned. Trying to look away, he saw a calendar with the day and date, and spoke aloud about its significance to him.

"Today's my birthday."

A portly, jovial-looking man with a moustache was now behind the bar.

"Well then, Happy Birthday, David. I've been looking forward to meeting you. My name is Al. Welcome to my place. Now. Howzabout---your favorite was always toasted cheese with bacon and tomato. Coming Up."

David was still massively confused. But he correctly sensed that a lot of answers were at hand. A lot of really big answers. The name he just took as coincidence.

"Al? What is this place?"

The barkeeper seemed to be picking his answers carefully.

"This, David? Well, let's just say it's where a person wants it to be, and its part of what they need."

Banner looked about him at the decor and setup.

"The calendar says its 1943. But I don't think a tavern set up in this style existed in 1943."

Al joked around a bit.

"Can you be certain? You were awfully young, then."

David nodded, while appreciative of the humor.

"Call it a hunch."

Al conceded a small bit of ground.

"Okay. Let's try a what-if. What If Sam had ended up here, instead of you? What would he see?"

Rather than asking how this man knew certain things, David moved for what he could by answering his question instead.

"Sam? No, he--he would never look for the answers he wanted by turning the right corners--or the wrong ones. He would expect to find it by stumbling on the most out of the way place possible. Someplace he would just never go himself."

Al flipped the grilled cheese.

"That's because, while Sam is fond of mysteries, you are fond of secrets. See, in that obscure little place that Sam might find, he'd touch the mystery, and gain new insights from it. But you will find out a secret, and shift your entire being once you do. To him, a mystery is something found in an odd place with people not quite who they seem. To you, a secret is something that is likely nearby and tantalizingly close, just awaiting the right papers to be lifted or corner to be turned. Heh. It's a wonder you two ever got along at all."

David began to care less about secrets and more about a sandwich that was all too close.

"You're not making any sense. A mystery is solved by learning a secret. The two go hand in hand."

"Do they? In the middle of your respective quests, you were both shown a way out. Sam swapped places with Al. You learned of Doctor Clive's curing of Dell Frye. Then--pfft. Sam has to go back in and rescue Al, and immediately things were as they were once again. Frye's rampage forces you to give up one of the last known traces of the curative serum, and your dose ends up smashed on the floor. Why did fate do this to the two of you? Well, I'd say it's because Sam forgot that mysteries don't always like to be solved at our pace. So the mystery maintained itself by letting him walk away for a brief sabbatical."

David took the first bite of his sandwich. It tasted like it had when his mother made it.

"What about me?"

"You forgot that secrets travel in clusters, and that some reduce the value of others that they're bundled with. All you wanted was Jeffrey Clive's cure. But bundled with it were the secrets of Frye's murderous nature, that small town's petty nature, and your own naive nature, which assumed that no one would interfere with something you wanted so very badly. Mysteries and secrets demand respect, David. Both of you forgot that, and you had to be reminded of it."

"A punishment?"

Al the barkeep shook his head.

"Just a reminder. See, there was a man who discovered all the secrets of how to enter time, his purpose to make things right that once went wrong. But how to actually use it without making things worse was a mystery to him. Then there was a man who solved the mystery of why certain people were able to perform superhuman acts in times of immense crisis. But knowing why still had him lost on the secret of how to tap into that hidden strength. They both grew impatient. As a result, one had to live a false death, and the other had to live an infinite number of lives that were not his own."

David raised a finger.

"Al? I may have heard this one before."

Al took the empty plate, and started putting together another sandwich.

"Well, you're hearing it again--and then you're going to hear the rest. The part you've never heard, or maybe the part you knew about but never really listened to."

David was silent as Al continued.

"One day, a new mystery cropped up. The man with the false death was breaking all the rules of the man who lived all those lives. For a time, both men shared the secret that neither wanted. That's because the bigger secret was that both leapers were now ready for the changes that were in store for them. They traded secrets and mysteries, and the man with all the lives was allowed to live the life he really wanted, and the man with the false death lived again across an infinity of lives that needed his to shake off their false deaths. For a decade now, the two men have lived the lives they loved. And now--another change. The man who was the Hulk is now needed--elsewhere."

David felt he had a question.

"Yes. I am the man who was the Hulk. But a moment ago, you referred to Sam and myself as 'both leapers' at a time when I was not a Leaper."

Al put some ham between the melting slices of cheese before turning the next sandwich over on the grill.

"David, David. Just when *weren't* you a leaper?"

"Now I really don't understand."

Al seared the sandwich briefly before flipping it onto the plate.

"What's to not understand? You have been a leaper for almost a quarter of a century."

David avoided looking in the mirror now. At last glance he saw Sam--or someone who looked an awful lot like Sam--in a military-looking jumpsuit/uniform, and looking more haggard and serious than Banner had ever seen his friend, and that was saying something. That Sam-alike passed by and then through a man who looked like David's one-time acquaintance Walter O'Reilly.

"Excuse me? Leapers are like these secret angels. Before this last decade, I was the Hulk."

The man shoved the sandwich forward.

"What makes a leaper, David? What qualities?"

David scooped out a bit of mustard in which to dip his sandwich.

"Well, they travel through time, for one thing."

Al raised a finger.

"You did that. Just one day at a time."

David resisted groaning at that one, and tried again.

"They come out of nowhere to help people, and then leave when they're done."

Al didn't speak. He only smiled. David rolled his eyes.

"I'll say again--leapers are like angels. I defy you to define the Hulk as an angel."

Al rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"I have a passing familiarity with the Good Book..."

"I thought you might."

"...and it seems to me that there was more than one type of Angel. For example, there were the angels that closed the lions' mouths, and then there were the angels who laid waste to the dwellings of the corrupt and the evil. Tell me, David. Just how many would-be tough guys and gals will never forget seeing that particular shade of green?"

A wave of understanding struck the long-traveling man at that moment. If it wasn't all made clear, then a great deal of it certainly was.

"I understand...I think. But Al? Who are all those people in the mirror?"

"Them? Well---that's an even bigger concept. Here goes."

Al pointed outside his tavern.

"This is also going to sound like one you know. Once, there was a man named Sam Beckett. As much like the man you know as he was different. The answers came a little harder to him. Life had been a little to a lot harder on him and his friends. He led a band of scientists into the desert, and there created Project Quantum Leap. The leaps were harder because they were the pioneers. The rules, such as they are, weren't yet known. And there were lines that they never--well--crossed over. I won't go into that. It gets a bit zen--more zen. With all these likenesses and all these differences, they went through many of the leaps you heard described, until Sam left Elvis Presley."

"That's when he leaped into me."

Al shook his head.

"No, David. That's when he came here. Not here-here, but to this juncture in his journey. We had plans for him. He had done so well, we were going to try him out on the darkest leap possible. Outside of his lifetime and with stakes so high--high is not high enough a word to describe it all."

Banner shook his head.

"But I thought we avoided the history-books. One life at a time, and then those lives affect others. At least that's how it seemed to me. Even my leap into Buddy Holly's pilot was fulfilled not by saving him and the others, but by radioing another plane about the snowstorm."

"And you'd be right, David. It is just like Jack told you. Very good. But this was a one-life leap. Sam was to act to cure one young heart of hate and loathing. And that would have---oh, it hurts to think about it."

"Who was it, Al?"

Banner took this new Al's relative openness as indicative of his talk about David's love of secrets. The barkeeper did not contradict this as he kept on.

"All I told him was that the leaps would be getting tougher. But think of the world, David, if Sam had been able to help one small abused little boy learning all the wrong lessons about life---in 1890's Austria. Think of all we know, if just a little true love could have been planted in that sickest of all minds."

David felt ashamed that he could not envision the place Al spoke of. It was as distant as an end to hunger or disease.

"Sam failed?"

Al smiled as he shook his head.

"No. He exceeded the grandest expectations anyone could have hoped for. See, rather than take on such a grandiose evil that in the end may exceed the works of one rotted-out soul, Sam suddenly remembered that he owed his Al one last leap."

"I don't understand."

"Don't you see, David? Rather than play time-travel super-hero and transform all of history, this original Leaper chose to save the happiness of the friend he loved best of all. That was who was needed. A man who stayed true to his beliefs, and managed to reconcile those few that came into conflict with love and logic. So a different fate was chosen for him. A true reward."

"He got to go home?"

Al began cleaning the grill.

"No. Doctor Sam Beckett never went home. The changes he made in Al's life impacted his own. That version of Sam may even have ceased to exist. But he also went on. The new time-lines that emerged from his passage created all we see here. Now, throughout the realities, there are leapers of every stripe and type. Sometimes, one reality's leaper even affects the history of another. Since Beth Calavicci waiting for her husband to return on the say-so of a stranger who then vanished is such a trans-universal moment, we had to tweak things a bit. So many worlds. And we're still moving forward. Expanding. That's where you come in, David."

"Austria?"

"No. But there is someone who needs you. Someone also on the verge of being lost to hate. Didn't you have a second cousin named Brian Banner?"

David frowned.

"He was a physicist, like myself. As a young man, he worked at the Los Alamos Atom Bomb project, till they found he was seeking buyers for some of the project's secrets. Treason in wartime has its price. Brian Banner was the one subject my father forbid me to even broach. I was glad not to."

Al tried to finish up what he was relating.

"David, there's a set of realities--fairly far from the one you know in terms of their mainline histories--that are set to begin creating Leapers. In the world you'll come to inhabit, your parents were never born, and Brian did not attempt treason. In 1962, he is still alive, and married. Your efforts start with him. Take note. If some realities are a bit out-river, then this one is like a lake in the mountains."

"How does Brian affect the status of leapers?"

"You'll see. Reality is a funny thing, David. As are realities. Go up high enough, and the world has caped gods and goddesses sitting on the moon, watching over us. No need for leapers there. Go down far enough, and all that stands between evil and its final triumph are two abused kids. No point in leapers there. But each place, and every place in between serves its purpose. The top as a repository for hopes and dreams, the bottom as kind of a *roach motel* for evil–or maybe a funnel."

David shrugged.

"I'm a physicist. I understand the concepts you're getting at. But where in your listing does the reality you want me to seek fall under?"

But this Al only said three more words.

"God Bless, David."

Through the front door of the tavern, David saw the man he knew to be his own Sam Beckett stare at him. He joined him outside. Sam nodded.

"We thought we'd never find you. Then Donny reminded me from his math class how a person's first birthday is really the first anniversary of their birth. That narrowed things down, fast."

"He's a bright kid. Takes after his folks. Sam–it's over. From now on, I won't be leaping anywhere you can track."

Beckett nodded.

"I know. Don't ask me how I know, or even how I know this place. But I do. David, I asked you this once before. Is this what you want?"

Banner bit down before answering.

"I'm told that I'm needed. That I'm needed to keep your dream–our dream–going somewhere else. Sam, half of it is wholly lost on me. But the half that isn't, I trust like I trust you. So yes, it is what I want. More than I've ever wanted anything,"

"Then there's only one thing left to do."

Reaching into the holo-ether of the imaging chamber, Sam produced Doctor Banner. Doctor Helen Banner.

"David?"

Banner smiled at the sister he had successfully saved.

"I won't be home for Thanksgiving anymore, Sis."

"I'm not writing you off, brother. There will always be a place set for you. Always."

"I Love You."

David saw her slowly mouth the same three final words before he was taken to a whole new world, there to somehow continue Sam's work.

In time, a reluctant Sam and a Donna who let herself be called Grandma sent Abigail Fuller to be next on the great journey, and one day to run the project with a life of its own. But David Banner would never be forgotten.

------

May, 1962 - A World Without Leapers

David found himself in a bar. A mirror revealed a much younger face than he remembered, but perhaps that, too, was part of his mission. He saw police gingerly approaching a noisy drunk at the counter. The face resembled that of David's own great-uncle, and so he knew where to start.

"Excuse me? Brian Banner? My name is..."

It was Brian. But one look at David put him into a state of blind panic. His moustache seemed to be sweating off his lip.

"Get away from me!"

Insanely, he grabbed one of the policemen's guns, and held it aimed at David.

"Damn it, Dad. I killed you once, old man. I'll do it again!"

David sincerely hoped that his mission didn't involve a deep friendship with this man.


	12. Chapter Eleven Mirror Likeness

Chapter Eleven - Mirror Likeness

May, 1962 - Dayton, Ohio

David Banner often found that he had stared down the barrel of so many guns over the course of twenty-five odd years, he had to remind himself that each one was just as capable of killing him as the last. Of course, the apparent lunacy of the man now holding the weapon aided this process to no end.

"Brian, I'm not who you seem to think I am. Even if I were, shooting me isn't going to solve anything. Please put down the gun."

The man before him was Doctor Brian Banner. In David's native reality, he had been a young genius gone terribly wrong, dying when he attempted to betray the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, during the Second World War. Yet this was not David's native reality, and the troubled young man was now an extremely troubled middle-aged man, reeking of liquor and worse.

"Didja come down from your heavenly perch to lecture me again, Dad? Try and tell me how to treat my wife, and my son?! I don't know how you got offa the bottom of that lake, Old Man. But this time I'm blowin' your stinkin' head off!!!"

David Banner now wore his own face. But his next act spoke of lessons learned from Doctor Sam Beckett. David jump-kicked, knocking the gun from Brian's trembling hand. He then stood and pointed.

"My name is David Banner. I'm your cousin, named for your father. But Brian, I am not him. We need to get you dried out and detoxified. So let these policemen do their job."

Brian at first seemed to acquiesce. David took this moment to check his wallet, and found proper ID for a David B. Banner born in 1934, along with a small but decent wad of cash. Banner winced. He had thought that the 'Al' he had encountered seemed a more subtle type than to overtly arrange his 'youthen-ing' and ID setup. Whatever it was about this version of Brian, it had to be terribly important. One of the police officers came and spoke to David, who had no regrets that his trans-temporal-universal package had included a decent change of clothes.

"Look, Mister Banner. We have to take your cousin here down to the station. Besides all the obvious loud drunk charges, he grabbed an officer's weapon and he just admitted to killing his own father in front of witnesses. I don't know what will stick and what won't, that's for a judge. But if you could go and speak to his wife, it would save us a world of trouble. I've visited that house so many times, it breaks my heart. That poor girl and her kid, under the thumb of that monster. Tell ya, that's not what I signed on for, as a rookie."

"I'll do it, officer. But first, I have to talk to him."

Indicating that he should make it very quick, David went to test Brian and see if the oddities extended to people's memories of him. After all, he could hardly call himself Brian's cousin if this Brian said he had no such cousin.

"Brian, I'm sorry that I had to kick the gun away. Before he passed, my father said that I should check in on you someday, to say Hi. I'm going to your house, now. Do you need anything there? Deli meat, maybe? Cereal?"

Like Al the barkeep had done, David used the offer of food to calm frazzled nerves. But David had been a rational man. Brian was sadly about to prove that this was not at all true of himself.

"Stay away from my family, you walking ghoul! THEY'RE MIIINNNE!!!"

The angry drunk then did something the officers had only seen in cinema and training films. Brian roared, and snapped his cuffs, lunging for David once again. By instincts honed in many a leap, David did what Sam Beckett had taught him. As Brian's hands went around his throat, David cupped his palm, raised it to an upright position, and jammed it into Brian's nose. The sick, sad life of a man who could have had it all at one time ended in a heap on the barroom floor. David stared down in horror, and then looked at his killing hand. He saw the still-bewildered police. He held up his arms.

"Should I have my hands in back, or in front?"

The younger of the two officers shook his head.

"I can't speak for the Sarge, Mister Banner. But that sure as hell looked like self-defense to me."

The older policeman nodded in agreement.

"Pure and plain and simple. He was nuts, and he targeted you twice. Fact is, when the work's all done at the coroner's, I wouldn't be shocked if it was his blood alcohol level plus all that adrenalin that really killed him."

While they did ask David to remain in town, the officers did not attempt to warn or question him as the ambulance came to take Brian's body. David Banner's fears of again being an accused--or a real-- murderer had passed. But so had the man he had been sent to see. On his way to the address given for Brian's family, he made an attempt to rectify this.

"C'mon---do it!!"

But after ten minutes, what he had feared had become apparent truth. He could no longer leap through time. Rescuing Brian that way would have been iffy in any event, but now it was no longer even an option.

"Al--who were you?"

Continuing on, David was furious with himself. How did he know that the 'Al' he had met wasn't Sam's mystery demonic presence? Why had he just accepted his pleasant-sounding words? Had the Sam and Helen he'd said goodbye to even been real?

"God--I need a sign."

On the street he was about to cross, Banner saw it was near the corner of Samuels Avenue and Becketts Way. The streets nearest them were Alberts Place and Observer Point. A radio in a passing car played the Dion and The Belmonts classic 'Donna The Primadonna'. A truck for Collins' Produce passed by next, and then walking by passed a man with horrid breath. David laughed and looked up.

"I said *a* sign. Don't you think that's overdoing it?"

Storm clouds began to murmur overhead, so David zipped it. He arrived at the Banner home just as the police were leaving. So was someone else. Someone who didn't look happy.

"Mrs. Banner, I really suggest you don't do this. You try to handle that brat yourself, don't come crying to me when you're exhausted from it."

Mrs. Rebecca Banner was much younger than her husband, and very beautiful. Only one thing marred her face, that being an eye that obviously had too much makeup on it. With Brian's temper in his memory, David felt he knew why this was, and he liked it not at all.

"First, Nurse Mantlo--don't ever call him a brat again. Secondly, you often took joy in pointing out to me that you worked for my husband, and not for me. Well, now you work for no one. And if you say another word, I will call the state authority on RN's and report you for every single bruise on my baby that I can say was not caused by Brian."

"You--are a little fool. Now either let me back in or I swear I'll---"

Rebecca stopped her slapping hand with hers.

"Mrs. Mantlo--don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. Now go. Your pay and your things will be sent. But you're not spending another night in this house."

In abject defeat, the vicious caretaker got into her car and drove off. She would not be seen again, nor would she seek her recompense, clearing out of both the state and the region. Rebecca now turned and saw David.

"You're him, aren't you? Well, Brian had one thing right. You do resemble his poor father. Did he really admit to killing him?"

Banner fought for anything resembling proper words.

"Yes. I'm so sorry. He came at me like---"

Rebecca held up a hand, and rubbed away the excess makeup from one eye.

"Mister Banner, you don't have to tell me about the way he went after his targets. Would you like to come inside? It looks like rain."

"Wait. Do you understand what I did?"

The young woman nodded grimly.

"You've given me and my son the only happy ending I could have hoped for. Please come in. The police said you gave him every chance. I won't grant you absolution for something I stopped considering a sin last Christmas--after the Tinkertoy incident."

David was very confused, but felt he owed the woman he had made a widow anything she wanted, even if this meant a small attack on his person. He went inside. There, a five-year old boy waited to be picked up by Rebecca.

"Daddy isn't home, is he?"

"No, honey. Daddy went away. For good."

The boy's eyes narrowed.

"He's dead, isn't he? Well, I'm glad he's dead."

The child was obviously very intelligent. But David felt the need to correct him.

"You shouldn't be glad about that kind of thing. Even if he could be mean, he was still your Daddy."

Rebecca seemed heartened by these words, perhaps worried about her own soul in this, when common sense said she should have been grieving.

"He's right, honey. Daddy was sick in the head. Now, maybe, he's at peace."

The boy pointed his own grief also on hold.

"Who are you?"

David held out a hand to shake.

"I'm your cousin, David Banner. What's your name?"

The hungry little eyes looked like they could use David's guidance. Guidance in taming yet another raging spirit within.

"I'm Bruce Banner."

Rebecca held him ever tighter.

"His name is Robert Bruce Banner. Brian's father was a great admirer of the Scottish king."

The boy nodded.

"Except King Robert stayed in the same room as an icky old spider. I like to smash spiders. Smash!"

David shook his finger.

"But spiders can be our friends. Take my word on it. Some of them are good people."

Bruce lit up.

"You wanna see my Tinkertoy set?"

"uhhh--Sure!"

Rebecca let him go. She looked on in wonder as he ran.

"They are so resilient. But I know he carries a lot of what Brian did in him. Look at me. I should be crying my eyes out, and throwing things at you. That's what common sense says. But common sense was never a nineteen-year old girl dazzled that a brilliant older scientist would ever want someone like her. I thought we'd be another Nathaniel and Mary-Ann Richards. But Brian only mentioned that he knew people from Los Alamos. He didn't tell me till later that virtually none of them trusted him, and that all of them hated him. Or that he hated himself. I didn't need him to tell me he hated and feared Bruce. I could see that from the start."

David had already dismissed the late, hateful Brian as being the real reason he had been sent to this place. But he was still no closer to knowing his objective.

"He hated and feared a newborn?"

"Mister Banner---"

"David."

"David, Bruce is a phenomenally intelligent child. I don't just say that as a mother. He's been tested. Brian immediately declared that intelligence an atomic mutation, from his work on the first two atomic bombs. He said that our baby was some kind of an inhuman monster!"

David got up, and very lightly took her hand.

"Rebecca, I've seen monsters in my time. If Brian wanted to find one--all he had to do was look in the mirror. What about the Tinkertoy incident?"

She sighed, walked to the kitchen and began to boil water for tea.

"It's what made me give up on him. You see, Bruce had opened his presents early. It's what kids do."

"And Brian got angry over that?"

"Maybe. But that's not what he yelled about. Bruce had already constructed an elaborate structure from the set. I'm not sure many adults could do that well. Brian kicked it apart, wildly proclaiming that no normal little boy could make something that complex. I tried to intervene, with my usual success. Between Brian's tirade and hearing his pet nurse go at Bruce upstairs--I knew then I would have to eventually leave him. I also knew that he would kill me when I did."

She looked down.

"I know what I must seem, chatting with my husband's killer about our family secrets."

David allowed one small line to be crossed that evening, as he cupped her cheek.

"You seem like a young woman emerging from a brutal nightmare. You've been stuck in it so long, you no longer know how to behave outside of it. Rebecca, let me ask you a few questions. Did Brian have a large family?"

She took, but did not at all push, his hand away.

"No. You're the first relative I've heard of since his father--Oh, God, I loved that old man. He kept apologizing for his son. Kept trying to show him how wrong he was. I used to wonder if he was sincere, or just an older Brian with a better facade. Then one day he didn't come back. Brian was smiling a little too often that week."

"Next question. Did all your friends and neighbors think Brian was this great fellow?"

Rebecca shook her head.

"He forbid me to have friends. For all intents and purposes, he did the same thing to himself. As for our neighbors, let's just say they'll be thankful for the quiet."

David sat back down.

"The police knew what he was. Your neighbors knew. And there won't be an army of in-laws or former friends making snide accusations against you. No one intimating that you hired me, or some such nonsense. Rebecca, you're free. The real monster is dead. If you don't want to mourn him, then don't. Trust me, forcing your emotions either way can only lead to disaster."

The tea-whistle blew, and a still-uncertain Rebecca ran to turn off the boiling water. Little Bruce, in the meantime, returned with his construction set. In short order, he had put together the kind of amazing structure his mother had spoken of.

"That's pretty good, Bruce. What is it, exactly?"

"It's a city."

It required some, but not a lot, of imagination to see it that way.

"Is that a fence around it?"

"Nope. It's a shield, to keep out the nuclear bombs."

David felt certain that even a bright child couldn't know what Bruce seemed to be talking about.

"It bounces them back before they fall?"

"No. It's a controlled electromagnetic pulse. That way, the initial shockwave can't get through, and the pulse from the bomb can't get through, unless they were exactly the same, which is almost impossible. The radiation should be dispersed down to harmless wavelengths."

David did a double-take on the boy. Images of Mozart sitting down and astounding an empire ran through his head.

"Bruce, that sounds just about perfect."

Bruce shook his head and angrily tore down the fence.

"It's not! Someone could make a bomb with an exceptionally high yield of gamma rays and knock it down. Nothing I do is any good. I'm bad, just like my Daddy said."

David knew enough to not yet challenge this thought directly. Instead, he picked up the pieces of the fence.

"Okay. What if---what if we made it so the controlled EMP was powered by gamma radiation? Kind of inoculating the shield, like when we get flu shots?"

Bruce rubbed his arm.

"I hate injections."

David nodded.

"I could do without them myself. Now, what do you think of our new shield?"

"It's great. But someone will always build a way around it. Daddy always said that when the bombs drop, no one will live."

"Bruce--how is it you know about all this?"

The little boy pointed at the bookshelf.

"Daddy's books. They explain most of it."

David asked the next startling question.

"You know how to read books like those?"

"Mommy used to read to me, and she pointed to some of the words. I just figured out the rest. Like making peanut butter and jelly rolls. It's not all that hard."

David sat down, almost stunned.

"You taught yourself how to read."

Bruce seemed apprehensive.

"Do I scare you, because of that?"

David now had the barest inkling of why he had been sent to this world. Damaged by fear and abuse, the untamed intellect before him could have easily spawned a monster. Brian's fear became comprehensible, but still no less odious to David.

"Bruce, I think that you're the most amazing, wonderful little boy I've ever met."

He of course meant no insult to Davey Collins, who would understand that Bruce needed those words like he needed air and water. After a few more smiles, Bruce was returned to bed, to sleep the sleep of angels whose heaven had at long last cast out the demon. Rebecca showed him the guest room, actually Brian's spare when alcohol wouldn't let him make the trip up the stairs.

"After that, you better be here tomorrow morning. I-I like the thought of him having a man - a real man - around."

"I've been a bit of a bum in my time, Rebecca. But I've never been a thief. However, this guest room is only temporary. I will find my own place, and soon."

When he had closed the door, Rebecca, both numb and feeling again, cursed herself for thinking of an ache that hadn't been answered in a non-violent fashion since her early marriage.

"Not too soon, Mister Banner. Not too soon."

-----

1967

"Dad! Dad I won the fair's trivia contest!"

David smiled, put down his hot dog, and hugged Bruce, obviously very proud of his medal.

"I had no doubt that you would."

Bruce's little cousin came running up, her pigtails bouncing.

"Uncle David! Bruce almost didn't win, but I showed them the rules which said the last question they asked broke the rules, and that they shouldn't have asked it."

Bruce rolled his eyes, but David knew that he adored the little tagalong, whom her uncle scooped up.

"Jennifer Walters, you will one day make a great lawyer."

As the two left again, a teary-eyed Rebecca hugged her man from behind.

"What's that for?"

"For giving a nineteen-year-old girl her fairy tale back."

It was just as she said. But a nagging sense of unfulfilled destiny still haunted Banner. He knew why Al had sent him, and he felt that Bruce was a part of that. But when was it to become apparent? Yet for then and for there, he ate greasy food and played with kids who moved like greased lightning.

-----

1972

Rebecca bit down. While David's yelling was nowhere near Brian's, and though he did not threaten violence or even imply it, she had plainly never heard him raise his voice for an extended period.

"We discussed this. When you got your scholarship, you were to apply to the quantum physics department! Bruce, we agreed on that!"

"No, Dad. YOU agreed I was to do that. I want to pursue the material sciences. It's what I've always wanted. Portals, worm-holes--I can't wrap my head around them. I'm already scared about entering university at my age. I'm not going to compound it by choosing someone else's dream! And I'm sorry. As far as I'm concerned, time travel is impossible--the stuff of science fiction."

David looked at his wife, and then his son. While he hadn't squandered their love for him, he had allowed his interpretation of his secret mission to blind him to Bruce's true wishes.

"I'm sorry. I yelled for no reason. I got upset because I had a notion in my head and I refused to see it as only being in my head. Can a well-paid private secretary and a super-genius forgive a loudmouthed high-school physics teacher?"

They each held him in turn, their ability to forgive not even an issue. But now David wondered more than ever. How would he spread leaping through a genius son, who, as so many scientists had done, thought that time-travel was naught but an amazing fantasy?

-----

1977

Rebecca's doctor explained the sudden dark turn of events.

"X-Rays showed a very old concussion, never treated. Water built up slowly. So slowly she would never have known, except for the building headaches. Please understand. You got her here in time. But it was also over a decade and a half too late. She didn't suffer at the end."

Bruce wept openly.

"He killed her. The bastard has been dead for fifteen years, and he still managed to kill her!"

David felt a familiar hole in his heart open wide once again. He had no words for his boy, when he had none for himself.

"What will you do, son?"

"Dad? Please understand. I've been offered the top position at a black-ops facility. I've met a girl. It means going silent for a long, long time. I know it's sudden. But now that Mom's gone, I need a project to bury myself in for a good while."

"When that time is done, Bruce--I'll still be here for you."

"When haven't you been?"

Morris Walters and his family, including a still-worshipful Jennifer, would take him in while he needed comfort. But when his initial grieving over his beautiful wife was over, David considered that it was again 1977, with him facing the open road as his only companion.

"Screw it. This time, I'm buying a Winnebago."

As he drove, his dreams were good ones, not bitter, with his beloved Rebecca sitting at a table chatting with Elaina, Laura and Carolyn, likely making fun of him as they did.

-----

1978

Living in the university town for six months gave him the critical time needed to complete work on his Doctorate. Though a man with several advanced degrees in his native reality, it was only now that he was once again Doctor David Banner in this one. While this was a goal of his, it was only a technicality. While in his prime--again--no lab or university was likely to hire him for the kind of work he would find challenging or productive.

He wasn't a nameless dead man on the run. Over the years, he had used little technological tricks to keep his bills to a shocking minimum, presumably for Bruce's college years and his and Rebecca's retirement. But Bruce had always been in line for scholarships galore, and Rebecca was gone, a thought that he was more used to than he thought and more torn by than he could have imagined. So instead of scraping by, David was a man with means but no goal. Then, a chance encounter while selling back his textbooks changed everything.

An angry student found that they couldn't sell back the expensive electronic typewriter they'd purchased. David snapped it up, finally finding a device that at least hinted of the word processors to come. In fact, all technology on this 'Earth' seemed to range 5-20 years ahead of what he remembered. His Winnebago drank the equivalent gas of what David remembered small import cars taking in his world. Before the family parted ways, Bruce himself had spoken of articles on compact fluorescent bulbs.

"But what to write about?"

His own life as The Hulk? Iffy. Too much back story, when one was not writing about an established character like Tarzan or Holmes. Sam and his bunch? No, he had lived among them for a time, and he still had trouble keeping all the names straight, bless them. A reader who didn't know them wouldn't stand a chance. A doodle of a DNA-helix showed him the way.

"At the very bottom--no leapers, and two beset children. At the very top--no leapers, but powerful mystery men keeping watch. Keeping watch--over the two children. How? With the help of--with the help of---"

Three months and a frenzy of paper and ribbon/ink cartridges later, David was seated before a publisher's agent. It wasn't a big house, but that would change.

"So nuclear war is about to break out. An angel named Alael descends to judge us, but he's spotted out by this Jesse Bennett, whose rage at the world's fate causes the angel to make an offer. Jesse not only gives up his life, but his existence--from birth straight on--and the world loses all memories of him. In exchange, whatever made the war start is averted, and we all live the nervous little lives we do. But Jesse is still around?"

David nodded.

"Yes. Now he's a 'Secret Angel'. He goes to wherever he's needed, helping people and saving lives. But the catch is, he was never born. So no one remembers him when he leaves."

"No footprints, huh? Makes sense. He made his deal, now he's gotta live with it. So to speak. And he can help subtly or unleash his 'righteous rage'. Good dichotomy. Almost reminds me of the comic books I used to write, back when Timely was still in business."

The agent smiled, and buzzed for someone who then walked in.

"Doctor Banner, we're going for a test run of this novel at some local colleges. I think it has hit written all over it. Or it will, after my associate here draws one of his best covers for it."

The other middle-aged man looked over the synopsis.

"I'm thinking a split-screen effect, kinda. The human, concerned with us all, and the angry angel, concerned only with higher things. Maybe a spurt of blue electricity between them."

The agent nodded.

"That's why they call him the King!"

David was excited to be creating something. This wasn't science, nor did it show any signs of truly bringing leapers to this world. But he rose up and thanked his hosts. For now, this was something.

"Thank You, both. Mr. Lee, Mr. Kirby. It couldn't have been done without you."

------

1982

An undisclosed base in the American Southwest. That's all he was told about his destination as he was shuttled back and forth, in order to induce 'geographic blindness' before being taken to see Bruce.

"Doctor Banner, your son has suffered an accident. Please come with us."

David wasn't quite as religious a man as Sam Beckett, and so couldn't see how his possibly losing Bruce could fit into any divine plan. He also could not imagine fate being quite so cruel. He had buried three wives, but the potential loss of his son was something he could not even contemplate. Once inside the base, a high-ranking officer greeted him.

"Doctor Banner? I'm Tad Ross, the Two-Star that runs this place. Fine book series, by the way. Sacrifice is something a career man like myself understands only too well."

David saw that the man was trying, but his patience had already worn thin.

"General, tell me. Am I about to understand sacrifice? Because no one will tell me what's happened to my son."

Ross was plainly uncomfortable being spoken to that way by a civilian.

"Banner, you do understand that speaking about what you see here will not only place you in extreme legal peril, including capital peril, but that it will also imperil your son's position within this hierarchy, to say the very least?"

David took a risk to try and take down the General's defenses.

"General Ross, if I could keep my mouth shut about what I saw at Project Prometheus, I think I can be trusted to show the proper discretion here."

The gamble paid off handsomely, at least to see the shocked look on Ross's face.

"Well, if *those* paranoid ghouls let you walk free, Doctor, you must have a steel lock on your memories and what you say. Blasted shadows---we can't call them spooks anymore, racial thing--- you'd think they'd let me know they had you in their sights!"

Ross guided him down to a lab suite, and there they met a young woman.

"Doctor Banner, this is Doctor Elizabeth Ross, our Mutative Biologist and my daughter."

The young woman smiled and held up a diamond ring on her finger.

"Not to mention your daughter, Doctor Banner. You're exactly like Bruce described."

David forgot the situation and embraced her. He then looked her over.

"I just wish he had gotten around to describing you. Don't worry, General. Bruce let me know before this started that he would not be able to communicate with me. But if you both don't mind, I'd like to communicate with him now."

"Doctor Banner---"

"Call me David, Doctor Ross."

"If you'll call me Betty. David, you should first understand what Bruce has endured."

"Betty---"

"Daddy, the man's here already. He deserves to know what we were testing. David, the Pentagon requested a weapon that would cut down the defenses of even the most hardened bunkers, from missile silos to the central command structure evacuation facilities of a targeted state. The theory was that if all sides knew that the bunkers were not an option anymore, it would force err, the other side, into more serious negotiations."

David chose to let several comments slide.

"In what capacity was it to penetrate these bunkers?"

Betty plainly didn't care for what they had done, even before the accident.

"Bruce bought us a ton of general funding by devising a directional mega-grenade with a small atomic pile. Through means that seem voodoo even to his dear wife, he managed to shunt most of the energy from the EMP and the shockwave into the initial burst of hard radiation. The bunkers, prepped for one level of radiation protection on a general scale, would have been facing a hundred times as much as normal, concentrated solely on their specific location."

David felt his heart drop out as he reasoned out what she had said. He shook his head.

"In other words, you built a gamma bomb."

David raised his hand to his forehead, with it shaking somewhat as it did. He was very, very glad that his affliction was basically part of another lifetime. The tension he was feeling could have easily triggered the transformation.

"What happened?"

Ross spoke, the father in him displacing the general for the moment.

"Your son is quite a man, Banner. Most super-eggheads like him are milksops, and not the sort I'd let near my daughter. When the direction of this project shifted toward the bunker-buster, a lot of our staff were ready to walk. Bruce convinced them to take on a project most of them couldn't stand while wringing the ready cash out of that weasely little White House liaison. You know, the peanut-farmer's boys were poorly dressed hicks, but at least they were Southern gentlemen. This bunch is all Hollywood! Makes me almost regret my voting...."

A look from Betty and David set him back on track.

"...yes. Well, he said, let the test go forward, and then we can do some real things like making better-protected and insulated barracks for our fighting men, and creating this weird sound-proofing for houses. Says that if we can make even over-crowded housing livable by letting folks sleep, that'll bring some world peace. Guess you and the missus had some loud rows, eh?"

Betty stepped in.

"Dad--David is Bruce's stepfather. It was Brian, his birth-father, that yelled--and apparently worse. Bruce won't ever talk about that, though."

"Oh. Sorry, Banner. Well, the test went forward, but we had two major security gaps. May cost me my job. One was, a punk kid snuck onto the test field. Bruce ran out, telling his assistant to hold the countdown. He got the kid into a safety ditch we set up by a lead-lined access tunnel. But his assistant was---God, this burns me--a Soviet mole. Figured to nab the plans and dispose of the B-Buster's creator in one fell swoop. Colonel Fury of the CIA is sitting on that one. He'll break. Problem for Bruce is--the slime didn't stop the countdown. Your son was still out in the open when it detonated, the target bunker right behind him. The ditch wasn't even touched. The directional aspect was a success. We can now make hard radiation strike a specific target. Brezhnev will just sit there like a lump and complain. But I'll bet dollars to donuts this brings one of his successors to the table, willing to do real business!"

David looked up and at Ross. His eyes were not green, but a transformation had taken place.

"General, hear me. If you break into so much as one more commercial for this weapon, I swear that I will, and you can quote me, reconfigure it one more time--as a gamma suppository. Now tell me what happened to my son!"

When Ross was silent for a variety of reasons, Betty spoke up.

"We have only a rough estimate of how many units he took in. It could literally be anywhere from 400 Megs to a full GigaRad."

David didn't need a genius intellect to know that beat the three million units of controlled gamma injection that had changed his life forever.

"Is there anything left of him?"

Ross shook his head.

"He's alive, and he's conscious, to boot. He's just...well, burned isn't really the right word."

David couldn't comprehend this turn, and yet, it rang a distant bell.

"Where is he being kept?"

Betty pointed.

"In the next ward. We have a specialist from back East doing some advanced analysis on his...condition."

David breathed in.

"General, I apologize for my outburst. May I have a haz-mat suit, so I can at least let him know I'm here?"

Ross shrugged.

"He's not radioactive. Richards says he's metabolifed...eerrrr, metabolized the gamma rays."

David knew, then. Fate was not cruel enough to take his boy from him. But it was cruel enough to visit on the son the sins of the stepfather. As he prepared himself, a young man with streaks of early grey at his temples emerged from the ward where Bruce was being held.

"Doctor Ross, your husband's condition is strikingly similar to that of my friend. But I see no physiological reason for its continued stasis and maintenance. I'm going to guess that a psychological block may be the cause. Has his family arrived yet?"

David motioned.

"I'm his family. David Banner."

David hadn't been one for newspapers or TV while he was on his writing streak. If he had been, then perhaps what happened next would not have been so great a shock. The scientist, who was a good fifteen feet from Banner, extended his hand to shake David's. That is to say, he extended it the entire fifteen feet without moving the rest of his body. David shook it, but his surprise was obvious.

"ummm--Uhhh---What--?"

Betty wondered what he was flustered by, and then took a chance.

"David, this is Doctor Reed Richards, aka Mister Fantastic of The Fantastic Four. You haven't heard of them?"

Richards waved his now-unstretched hand.

"Betty, I suspect Doctor Banner is here for neither a book-signing nor my own autograph, if anyone would actually want it. Doctor, I knew your son in college, when I was on my cybernetics degree. He spoke of you often. Said you were the quantum physics maven in the family. When this is done, I'd love to compare notes. In fact, there was this one classmate of Bruce's who devoured everything you had given him on theories of trans-temporal..."

Richards caught himself and stopped blathering.

"My apologies. This is usually the part where my fiancée or my best friend nudge me. Doctor Banner--please be ready."

"I'm as ready as I will be, Doctor."

They entered the ward, and David saw a curtain drawn. He prayed that he was wrong.

"Bruce? It's Dad. I want to see you."

The voice behind the curtain was Bruce's, but filtered somehow.

"Dad? I'm glad you came. But I can't let you see me. It finally happened, like I always knew it would."

"Bruce, I don't understand. What are you saying?"

"You've done so much for me. Made me so strong. Saved me from hate. From anger. But you're not my father. Brian is. I can't escape that. I was a fool to believe I ever could."

"Brian is dead, son. Listen to me. Daddy killed the monster. I made him go away."

The voice was full of salt and despair.

"No. You couldn't. Brian was a monster. And so am I. Just like he always said. Now, everyone can see it. Help the General take care of Betty, please?"

Betty spoke up at last.

"Bruce will take care of Betty, and vice-versa. We'll find a way."

David saw Ross look away, as though ashamed. He tried again.

"Bruce, I love you, as did your mother, and as I loved her. Young man, you couldn't make me go away when you were seven. Remember? You thought I was leaving, when really your mother and I were just ready to announce our wedding plans. So you were bratty, destructive, impossible and mean. Did I go away then? No. Because I am a father, and a good father loves his children. Now let me see you!"

"FINE!!!"

The curtain pushed away, and David saw his son. He also saw all his worst fears confirmed.

"There. You got your wish."

Bruce was now close to ten feet in height. He had to be close to half a ton in weight. Every inch of his musculature was enhanced and massive, chiseled while never belying his enormous bulk. His eyes, hair and skin were a deep hue of emerald green.

"Do you love me now? Am I still the most amazing little boy you ever met?"

David took his hand and pressed it to Bruce's gigantic palm.

"No. You are a man. One incredible man. And if you ever dare to ask me again whether I could stop loving you, those muscles won't keep me from making you regret that stupid question. Understood?"

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. But Dad, look at me. One of your stories isn't going to make this all right again."

David smiled, and bid Betty walk over.

"Depends on which story I have to tell. See, this one flows a little differently than some. But I'm going to dispense with the adventure, and the once upon a time exposition, and cut straight to the happy ending."

Betty Ross-Banner's and Reed Richards' eyes went wide at what David told his son next.

"I can cure you, Bruce."

As the group stood dumbstruck, and Bruce began to smile, David turned to his daughter-in-law.

"Betty, will you continue Doctor Richards' on-scene analysis? We'll need to factor in any further changes."

"I'm not leaving him, David. Anymore than you would."

"General? Can I have a lab with Doctor Richards?"

Ross nodded.

"If it can undo this mess, I'll set up the blasted Mayo Clinic!"

Once outside and waiting, Richards shook his head.

"Doctor Banner that statement could be damaging to Bruce if you can't back it up, and I must say, I have my doubts."

David stood firm.

"Doctor Richards, what if I told you that my blood contains anti-mutative antigens that I am nearly certain can at least ameliorate my son's condition?"

David would soon regret, at least on some levels, those bold words. For he had badly underestimated the one man who was likely his son's intellectual superior.

"The only way that could be true, David, is if you yourself had once suffered from almost the exact same condition!"

Now, Banner was trapped. For explaining one thing to a man of this genius was surely to reveal the entire truth --and the entire lie--of his current existence. But this was his son's life.

"I did. I was conducting a study in hyper-adrenal episodes of sudden meta-strength, such as people have been said to develop in intense emergency situations."

Richards almost snorted.

"Apocryphal."

"Maybe so. But I found a commonality of gamma ray activity on the days in question, possibly influenced by elements in the Van Allen Belt. So I subjected myself to what I thought was 300K gamma units, but turned out to be more like 3 MegaUnits."

"Doctor, when was all this supposed to have taken place? Because the equipment necessary for what you just described would not have been available until the last decade."

Banner ignored him.

"From then on, extreme anger, outrage, and either imminent or persistent peril caused me to become a creature like Bruce. Mine was three feet shorter and possibly six hundred pounds lighter. But all the other factors match up. Now, will you help me, Doctor Richards?"

The other man pulled back.

"No. Because your story makes no sense, and violates all timeframes associated with what I know of Bruce Banner. Because a high school physics teacher with a recently-earned doctorate should not be able to transact on levels of science like this. I will inspect your work when you are done, Doctor Banner. But I will do so with a jaundiced eye, and with much suspicion. For what it's worth, I hope you do succeed. My friend needs some hope, and he needs it soon."

As Richards walked back to Bruce's ward, a much younger man walked up.

"I'll help you, Doc. Your son got that way saving my stupid life. Just take me in the lab. I'll do whatever you tell me to."

"Errr--thanks, Mister---"

"Rick. Rick Jones."

As long as the kid could hold things steady, he could help. But David would be hard pressed to recreate Jeffrey Clive's formula from blood samples and memory.

"Rick, the first rule of helping a scientist is not to touch anything."

Jones fetched coffee, when he was asked, while a concerned Betty and a suspicious Richards stayed clear of the small lab David was given. But after twelve hours, David felt that he might have to break his promise to Bruce.

"I'm drawing a complete blank. If the radiological purgatives aren't aligned in a precise ratio with the anti-cancerous toxins--Bruce could become a vegetable or worse."

That was the trick of Clive's lost cure, which David had recreated at Quantum Leap, in order to inoculate himself against possible future gamma overdose. Both the Hulk-cells and the gamma energy backing up the mutation had to be flushed all at once, or one would re-engender the other.

"Rick--what are you doing?"

The teen was mixing chemicals and substances, seemingly at random. An exhausted David rapidly became enraged.

"Just what part of 'don't touch anything' did you fail to understand?!"

But Rick seemed thrown off not at all. He spoke calmly.

"What you were forgetting was the balancing matrix. Without it, either the purgatives or the DNA restorers will go radically out of balance. It's kind of like a Ph regulator for green hair."

David checked, and surely enough, the cure was beginning to coalesce as he remembered it. He looked at the boy before him, and shook his head.

"How did you do that?"

Rick Jones shrugged and grinned.

"The first time we met, you told me that I should leave the notion that I was somehow the ultimate genius back on the farm in Indiana."

Banner's heart lifted. It had been such a very long time, he had almost forgotten.

"Sam?"

'Jones' nodded.

"We began to think we'd never find you. When we finally found that weird changeable tavern again, all we were told was that you were alive and well in a parallel universe. Everyone always says that there's an infinite number of realities, but you have no clue until you try and search through them. We actually had to backscan you all the way to your emergence in this world to confirm your identity."

While excited to 'see' his old friend, Banner was a bit confused.

"Why were you searching for me? I thought I made it clear that this was what I wanted."

Sam as Rick shrugged.

"That doesn't mean we wanted to lose track of you forever. Louis wanted to see if cross-universal leaping was even possible. He found out it is, but only if you truly swap bodies, like they thought I did, way back when."

David asked about the name he didn't recognize.

"Louis?"

The eyes of the trans-possessed Rick Jones closed.

"Louis is Abby's grandson, David. Soon to be a grandfather himself."

The one question that David had not thought to ask now came forward unbidden.

"What year are you from?"

'Rick' smiled and nodded gently.

"I wondered when that would come up. I'm from 2093."

David Banner had never found math to be a problem, in and of itself. It was always the implications of that math that tended to knock him flat. As it did now.

"Sam that would make you 140 years old!"

Beckett's borrowed face took on an expression David knew all too well.

"Twice what the Bible says we get. It's been a good run, David. I have no regrets."

Banner let the curative mix.

"Why do I not like the sound of that?"

"Its death, David. It happens to us all. I'm the last one left, from the crew we knew, even down to the kids. I want to see Donna and Al again."

David deliberately looked away as he analyzed a sample of the finished cure.

"Then why are you bothering me?"

'Sam' put Rick's hand on Banner's shoulder.

"You're like a certain surgeon I know. When it comes to death, you are one sore loser."

David turned towards and on him.

"You're one to talk. Sam, my life has been marked off almost entirely by loss. You can't show up out of nowhere after twenty years, just to tell me you're dying!"

Jones pointed.

"Damn you, that's not all I came for, and FYI, Doctor, I deliberately chose to visit you before I pass on. We've been scanning this universe for five years, and I'm here to say that you are closer to your goal than you realize. David, this leaper is finally out of time. Don't let this be how it ends between us. Because while you will see me again, trust me. It won't be like now."

David breathed in.

"Don't ask me to simply accept this. You gave me my life back, Sam. Then you gave me another. As a result, I now have this life. I'm a father. I have a son. And that son is suffering, just as I did. So what do you do? Show up one last time to make that right, too. I can't just shrug off your death."

Rick suddenly grabbed for the table and nearly fell.

"The leap is reversing itself, David. My body won't be able to take the return. Rick will be back, usual conditions applying vis a vis his memory. Help me sit down."

David did just that, hard-pressed not to see what was coming as a tragedy. The too-brief visit would weigh upon his soul for several years. Sam smiled.

"You made one mistake when you came here, David. But it's a forgivable one, and you'll be forgiven for it pretty easily, once you realize its nature. Annnd--here's the part where I really join eternity. Wonder if I'll get to be one of your secret angels, David?"

"Get to be? Sam, you've always been that. Always."

Sam sounded more and more distant.

"I know now about the original Sam Beckett. But I think that he did get home. There's room in the omniverse for so many...so many marvels, David. Your son is surely one of them. I think he'll be...a great hero. Like you."

David saw the eyes begin to close. Banner's eyes teared.

"Get ready to leap, Sam."

Jones awoke, and looked around. Sam Beckett was gone, but never forgotten.

"Hey, Doc? I think--I have a note for you. I musta wrote it for somebody else. Weird."

The note merely said:

*David, we will be strangers when we meet again--Sam.*

Rick was sorely confused.

"Doc--who's this Sam?"

David set the cure up for Bruce in a syringe. He managed a smile.

"Sam, Rick? Sam was just one of what we all are. A drop of water in an unending cosmic ocean."

David looked directly at the younger man.

"But sometimes, the drops sparkle."

Reed Richards found a means to deliver the cure through Bruce Banner's tough skin. Yet all did not go precisely as planned.

"Your cure was meant to purge someone with a much lower level of radiation poisoning, Doctor. But I believe it may yet allow Bruce--and perhaps even my friend Ben--to place the transformation under their control. That will take time and therapy, of course."

Bruce was already looking more like David once had, during his time as The Hulk. Betty kissed her man, and then her father-in-law.

"It beats the alternative, Reed. Hey, David? We're all starved. Could you fetch this happy couple some hamburgers at the commissary?"

David took his son's gigantic hand.

"Mustard, right?"

Bruce smiled, despite his condition.

"Jumbo-sized."

David Banner was tired, and quite hungry, himself. Otherwise, he might have caught what was really going on. After he left, General Ross emerged from an anteroom. He looked uncertain.

"All Fury and his man Logan could tell us for certain was that he is no spy. Bruce, son--the only people he ever associated or met with are you and your mother."

Bruce concentrated, and managed to resume a human form only slightly taller and more muscular than his normal one.

"General, who is he? God knows I love him. My Mom always said never to question the miracle we got when he came into our lives, or else it might get taken away. But why has Dad never once told me anything about himself?"

Betty rubbed her forehead.

"I already love him for what he did for you. I mean, he just waltzed in here and undid a major catastrophic mutation. But Bruce, honey? Your poor mother was a battered woman. Even if David had just been slightly less abusive than Brian, she would have told you that. With him being part Knight, part Angel---she must have been very afraid of the day he would turn on her. Except it never happened."

Reed Richards had to leave, but added his two cents again.

"I wonder if he even realizes how this 'genius from nowhere' scenario marks him off in the eyes of anyone capable of thinking about it. My friends often accuse me of ignorance as regards popular culture, but even I've seen 'The Fugitive'. Bruce, I'm only grasping here. But I honestly believe that man is the equal of any five people in our greater circle of peers. That sort of intellect does not simply crop up."

Ross bit down before speaking again.

"Bruce, any answer we find is less likely to speak of a danger to our country than to your relationship with your father. Do you want this?"

Bruce Banner grabbed a picture from 1970. A very happy man rode a train in Pennsylvania Dutch Country with his equally happy wife and son.

"General, I have to know."

Ross nodded.

"I spoke to the boy, Rick Jones. He's agreed to report on David Banner's movements and anything he says. I just hope it's something innocent, like skipping on a bad mortgage or like that. Money is a good reason for a man to seek a new life. That's what he had to have done. Because as far as law enforcement is concerned, the man began existing when he showed up in that bar with Brian Banner in 1962."

Betty sat with her man, and heard him speak, barely above a whisper.

"Daddy, who are you?"

------

1983

David awoke in the strangest landscape he had ever seen, watched over by a man wearing a golden, curve-horned Viking-style helmet. He spoke in a language that almost didn't sound English, and in a style that struck somewhere between the Bible and Shakespeare.

"Know ye well, mortal, that thou art surely the prisoner of Loki, stepbrother of hated Thor! Thine captivity compels thy Hulkish son to do mine bidding and stage attack pon' the God Of Thunder. Though Thor will surely best him, so weakened will he be from such pitched battle, then shall the Thunderer fall for'eer to wicked, wily Loki!"

"Alright. So--I'm a hostage. Why am I not bound up?"

The one called Loki cackled.

"What need has Loki for chains, mortal? This place is called the Isle Of Silence, and thou art as bound here as I. For here there be hungry trolls, and they like the meat of those foolish enough to venture out greatly and well."

There were indeed--things--in the darkness just beyond them, so David stayed put until he coughed.

"Thirsty, are thee?"

Laughing anew, and looking not a little bit mad, Loki tossed him a goblet.

"Fill it with well-water. It is Loki's gift to thee."

David had dealt with a Thor before, but he was nothing like the Thunder God Banner saw battling a Hulked-out Bruce in Loki's conjuring. But since that long ago and far away incident, David Banner had studied the rules of dealing with 'gods'. Loki had unwittingly given him the means to his defeat.

A group of heroes arrived through the portal made by Thor's Hammer. Rick Jones was with them.

"Sorry I couldn't tumble them to Loki's game earlier, Doc. But I was sure he'd hurt Pops Banner."

Whatever his doubts about David, Bruce swore inside to kill the evil Asgardian if his father were hurt.

"The fact that you got the message to them at all is what matters most, Rick. It put a stop to that pointless battle, and got us here. Thor did the rest."

The son of Odin nodded.

"Rest thou assured, Hulk. By the All-Father Odin, we shall not rest till Loki hath yielded up thine own sire. Lo, there shall come a reckoning."

A man in armor that both gave him power and sustained his faulty heart flew overhead.

"Hulk, I'll scan ahead for Doctor Banner. I--my employer, Tony Stark, is a huge fan of his novels. He'd be terribly upset if I allowed him to come to harm."

"So would I, Iron Man. In fact, I'm barely keeping my temper in check as it stands."

The at-this-time literally Golden Avenger flew off. The diminutive Ant-Man turned to his partner, The Wasp.

"Janet, darling? What's wrong?"

"Oh, Henry--that poor old man. You know that I lost my own father, quite recently."

"I know. I was there. But this Loki won't get away with his crimes. That I swear."

Iron Man flew back, and pointed in the distance.

"People--I don't think that you'll believe this."

Traversing the short distance with no effort but with cautious hearts, the five heroes were indeed stunned by what they saw. For Loki was bound and gagged, and David Banner was having some fruit and drink, waiting for his rescuers. He smiled at his son.

"Bruce! And I see you brought some friends. Good. You know, he always had trouble making friends in school."

Thor walked over, his laughter barely concealed.

"Loki is also named Lucky, this day, twould seem. For yon mortal did not also into thy mouth an apple stuff, as well! Doctor Banner The Elder! Thor wouldst fain know of how thou didst achieve such a victory, when Loki's Aesir strength must needs exceed thine own by a wide range and margin."

Bruce Banner reduced to a form resembling one like David's long-ago one. The larger Hulk form was for all-out battle, and was also harder to control. Not as hard, though, as figuring out his stepfather continued to be.

"Yeah, Dad. How could you beat a god?"

The Wasp, to Ant-Man's consternation, shifted her gaze between David and The Thunder God.

"He's dreamy with that blond hair---then again, my father never looked like Hulk's does. I don't think anybody's father did."

"Wasp--control yourself."

"Sorry, dear. But it's that Hal Linden thing. You understand."

Henry Pym only wished he did. But the roving eye of Janet Van Dyne was no one's main concern, right then. For David Banner was ready to explain. He held up a goblet.

"Loki gave this to me as a gift. So I just gave it right back."

Only Thor understood.

"A wily one art thou, scientist. For once a god has made a gift to a mortal, only by ceremony and ritual may that god take it back. For if they are not protected when they do this thing, the gift of the divine to the mundane becomes the gift of the mundane to the divine--and costs the god in question all their godly powers. As it has done with Loki. All-Father Odin! Reclaim thine evil stepson and then do with him what thine All-Wisdom sees fit to do."

As the badly chastened Loki faded to face his kingly father, David's former peril had a consequence perhaps as great as the reason he had come to that universe in the first place. Iron Man spoke it first.

"You know, the way we all worked together to expose Loki's scheme makes me think. If it were possible once, it may be beneficial on many odd occasions. As these 'super-villains', so to speak, grow bolder and craftier, it's going to take the powers and abilities of more than just any one hero-type to solve the messes they make."

The Thunder God went next.

"There is great wisdom in thine words, armored one. Thor hath few peers, either in Asgard or Midgard, what thee calls Earth. To know that the best of these peers may be called for steadfast allies as well would be a comfort and a boon, e'en still to one such as I."

Unlike in many such worlds, the Hulk was a trusted hero, and his identity known early on. So he spoke freely on the subject of great interest to him.

"I bet I'm not the first super-human to have a relative used against me as a hostage. I won't be the last, either. A teaming like this could be of help in any number of odd situations, like how I was stuck in not saying anything while Loki held my Dad. Count me in."

The Wasp nodded and smiled.

"But a team of this caliber needs a snappy, snazzy name. Say, something like..."

Lost for a moment, she looked admiringly again at David Banner. He shrugged.

"Folks, the only heroes I ever thought were snazzy were John Steed and Emma Peel."

Wasp pointed.

"Yes! Something like...The Avengers!"

The new name was quickly adopted, and Iron Man offered his employer Tony Stark's Manhattan mansion as the place of their first official meeting. When Bruce made sure his father was invited along as a scientific advisor, this seemed to snap something in young Rick Jones. While the heroes talked, he pulled David aside.

"Pops, can I talk honestly with you?"

"Of course, Rick."

The two had grown close, while following Bruce on his adventures, and helping Betty keep track of the now-stabilized mutation. What Rick had to say would be painful for them both.

"I call you Pops, because I hope my own father was something like you. But it doesn't matter. Because neither you nor the Doc have ever made me feel like I didn't belong. He saved my life, so I'd do anything for him. Anything except this. This, I won't do anymore. Not for anybody."

Rick gulped quite a bit as he explained how the friendship between the teen and the elder Banner had a level to it David would never have guessed at.

"I won't spy on you for him anymore, Pops. You're aces in my book, and I'm tired of playing a lie like this. I'm getting ulcers before my time--and besides, it's just wrong. Please don't hate him, though. Ya gotta know he loves you."

David nodded to Rick before he walked away.

"I know he does."

When he was back on Earth and out of earshot, David finished that statement.

"He just doesn't trust me."

--------

1988

The Avengers were now the premiere team of super-heroes on Earth, and their undisputed leader was a living legend of the Second World War. Any other man clad in a red, white and blue chain mail costume would look foolish. Any other man, that is, except the right man. Helping the fallen Sub-Mariner to his feet, Steve Rogers pointed at one of his team's deadliest foes.

"Kang! We're tired of your endless scheming. Go back to that sorry pit you call the 40th Century. Because you are never gaining a foothold in this one."

Battered and bloodied but unbowed, the self-proclaimed Tyrant Of Time chuckled.

"Why, Captain America. Surely a soldier such as yourself sees that this chaotic century needs a guiding hand."

As The Hulk, Bruce Banner had been a member for years, since the group's founding. David had remained on staff at Avengers Mansion, looking for signs that said his secret mission had succeeded. Of his son's suspicions, he said nothing. Since Kang was definitely not the kind of man Sam Beckett would admire, David observed the battle, which now seemed set to conclude with Bruce's warning to the evil time traveler.

"Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, Kang. But it sure as hell does not need some interloper from an alternate timeline, messing with our history!"

Through the broken face-plate of his battle armor, Kang openly grinned.

"Is that so, Bruce Banner? Well, observe."

A holographic light show began. David's heart dropped when he saw what looked like a movie taken from the past in his native universe. A movie of himself. Bruce shook his head.

"Dad?"

"Watch, Doctor Banner. Watch as your beloved stepfather is merely walking along, minding his own business--when--ooh, a group of hooligans begin to harass him. See what I mean, Captain? Every version of the 20th Century needs me."

The young thugs beat on David in the projected flashback. The outcome was all but inevitable. Bruce Banner saw his parent with new eyes--green eyes.

"Dad, you're changing--changing into me!"

Kang began to vanish, his damage done.

"Oh, and the date on said video? 1989--and I don't mean the future of this timeline. Rest uneasy, Avengers. Remember, I can strike at whim–and I will."

All saw Bruce move towards David as he emerged from inside the mansion. Captain America motioned frantically.

"Hulk, stop! Doctor Banner--he may not be in control."

"No, Cap. I'm fine."

"It's all right, Steve. He's my son."

Bruce reverted to human form, and looked David over.

"I have some questions. One, why are you here?"

"Someday. Not now. But I promise I will tell you."

Bruce wiped his eye.

"Two--were you sent here to help or hurt me--or Mom?"

"You two were never my mission. Only my joy."

Nearer still, he asked a few more.

"Three--was that really you, transforming on screen?"

"Yes. But that was a very long time ago. You might even say several lifetimes ago."

"Four--are you, or were you, me, in that other place?"

"With some allowances for dimensional genetic drift, I think so. But Rebecca and Brian were not my parents, or even close. I think who we are kind of caused one to displace the other. You might be better off getting with Reed Richards on the fine details of that one."

"Five---will you accept it if I keep asking who you really are and why you came here?"

"I think I raised you to ask questions."

Bruce braced and prepared himself for one last question.

"Once upon a time, an impostor who called himself my father showed up, out of nowhere. He beat me and my mother, and made us feel like nothing. But then my real father came, and made the impostor go away. The phony's name was Brian. The real father and husband was named David. So Dad, my last question is not who you are or why you came--but--but are you staying? Are you going to go away?"

They embraced. David rejoiced, for anger had been beaten one more time.

"You're not strong enough to make that happen, son. Now let's get home to your wife."

Bruce Hulked-out, and scooped the smaller man up.

"She gets angry when we're late. I--don't like her when she's angry."

The two men looked at each other.

"Chocolates."

Captain America watched the Banner family depart, as he had many times before. But a new feeling of openness between the father and son made him give up a characteristic comment.

"Now, that's what this country is all about."

In a world of Marvels, Doctor David Banner now had everything he could ever wish for, except for the original reason he had come to dwell there. As Li Sung had predicted, his life's journey would not end before that one last riddle revealed itself. That journey would be longer still, and David would now not be long in seeing his mission completed.

But nor would he see that completion coming.


	13. Epilogue The Three Scientists

Epilogue - The Three Scientists

May 26th, 1995

The cake said that he was sixty-one. In fact, though, when David Banner added up all the years against what he knew of his own past, he realized with a start that he was, by some standards, as old as ninety-three. But seeing Bruce and Rick, the young men he'd taken and raised as his own, and Betty, who had turned to him ever more since General Ross's death in the Gulf War, he decided he felt twenty-three, if he felt even that old. Bruce's cousin Jennifer Walters, now known as She-Hulk for obvious reasons, kept David's grandchildren from rushing him as he blew out the candles.

"Yaaaayyy!!!"

Now rush him they did, and not far behind the kids were a gathering of Earth's mightiest heroes. One outstretched hand in particular made the elder Banner feel as though he belonged. Their early mistrust was a thing of the past.

"Thank you for everything, David. If you hadn't been there at Franklin's birth..."

"You'd have found another way, Reed. It's what the Fantastic Four does."

A man in a wheelchair nodded at David.

"I can't say everything's honey and roses, Doctor Banner. But people will always remember you shouting down that hateful bigot on 'Crossfire'. 'Our Children Are Our Children--Period.' Words to remember. Even Erik conceded its effectiveness, though it seems nothing can dissuade him from the paths of terrorism. Some mutants may make evolutionary claims, but our stubbornness still ties us in with the rest of humanity."

"The good fight remains the good fight, Charles. I once knew a man more stubborn than either you or Magneto could ever hope to be."

"A good man, I hope."

"The best. And a visionary, like yourself."

They were there for him, to thank him, these planet-shaking and planet-shaping titans. One passed by in a disguise that David saw through for reasons unique to his place of origin.

"Don't worry, David. Foggy assures me that the effort of Timely's successor companies to renegotiate your book royalties will fail. Your first compilation volume check should be in my office by next week."

"Thank you, Mister Murdock."

A flashbulb went off near David, revealing another familiar face.

"Sorry about that, Doctor Banner. Parker, Daily Bugle. Umm--I'm supposed to ask if you have any plans to rejoin the Avengers as an active member."

David shook his head. When Bruce and a group of other heroes had been thought dead, David acted and awoke his own latent Hulk mutation. But his time as a super-hero proved less than perfect, and once again reversing the mutation brought him much relief.

"No, Mister Parker. My son is the Hulk. I'm just a hanger-on at these hero conventions."

David did not hear Parker mutter 'yeah, right', owing to some help the research scientist had given Spider-Man. Next, a boy-who-was-not tried to greet David, but failed. Banner smiled.

"It's all right, Jerry. I'm glad you're here, too."

Once, the boy-at least his visual age made him look like a boy-- known as Gerald Henry Pym had been the Avengers' young star, a hero known as Warpwave. Despite the intense loneliness and fear he had exhibited, Henry and Janet Pym had helped the angry super-boy to trust again. Bruce had been happy for the teen Avenger, almost as happy as David recalled him being when his own adoption had occurred.

"Uncle David."

Then many dark secrets came to light. The 'boy' was a half-century old genetic construct, made from the DNA of victims of the Nazi Holocaust--and made by the Nazis themselves as a living pathology museum. The guilt and shame had nearly made Jerry autistic, with no recovery yet in sight.

"M-onster."

The young man was referring to himself. David knelt down and looked at him.

"No. You're not a monster. You mustn't ever say that."

As the Pyms reclaimed their boy, Captain America bit down.

"Another victim of Herr Red Skull and his Fuhrer. David, I swear by Old Glory, Jerry will be the last."

David turned his attentions toward his own son, who gestured for him.

"C'mon, Dad. Field trip time."

"What kind of field trip?"

Bruce grinned, and threw some words back at David.

"Just trust me?"

"Since you put it that way..."

David was happy to play along, indeed, nowadays, he was happy for all he had. The heroes called him one of their own. Their children, even to the badly withdrawn Jerry, tended to call him Uncle. And he had accepted that his primary mission was a failure. It wasn't his fault. He'd even tried to duplicate the time-travel experiments he knew by himself, but some laws of physics were different in this universe, and it had never been his project, anyway. So David let himself be happy, because he really had no cause to be sad. The heroes and their civilian friends and family piled into the transport matrix, a minor effort of Reed Richards' genius and Tony Stark's generosity.

In the new, unknown place, David immediately felt a tug. In the distance, he saw Ben Grimm, another of those helped by the formula David had recreated to help Bruce.

"Stretcho, I'm gonna go and find the Federal Liaison to this shindig. He was my top-kick in the test-pilot program, back in the day."

A familiar twinge hit David again at Ben's words. He heard Henry Pym talking with Michael Morbius.

"Well, of course he's good. Besides, I think he's the only one out of our combined graduating classes not to have exposed himself to gas or radiation!"

"To think. We'll finally have a defense against the schemes of madmen like Doom, Kang, Zarko and all their temporal fabric-ripping ilk."

Betty was talking with Sue Richards as all were seated.

"She's supposed to be a genius, but she sure plays the ditz a little too well for my comfort."

"I just hope we keep avoiding that little guy. Talk about halitosis..."

David was putting the clues together, but he couldn't believe it. Yet. Bruce nudged him.

"The fellow in charge of all this was one of my college roommates. Would've flunked out one semester, if not for me. He devoured all that stuff you sent me on tachyons and wormholes. You mean I never told you about this guy?"

David smiled as he realized. By saving Bruce's soul, he had helped this other young genius make the cut where he would not have before, for whatever reason that was. Had Bruce been withdrawn like poor Jerry, he might never have been social enough to have roommates. It was time, he realized. It was at long last time.

"Later today--I'll tell you a little story. My story. The whole thing."

"Dad? Are you all right?"

"Never better, Bruce. Never better."

A young man stepped forward. He was not a super-hero. But he was on his way there.

"First off, let me thank the Banner family. Bruce, who kept me from being sent back to the farm, and David, whose notes on certain aspects of temporal science got my juices flowing, and whose 'Secret Angel' series will always be a favorite. Now, I will explain my theory. Our lives are a lot like this string I'm holding...."

And when he was done, the summation of David Banner's mission commenced, in the one place he had never thought to look, that being the obvious. For it was on that day, in a world of Marvels, in the New Mexico desert that a dream both began and continued onward into infinity. Whatever its specific outcome, David Banner wished his old friend well as the cycle began anew, even though this version of that old friend barely knew him. The men who were the Hulks watched, living in their self-made happy endings. Their colleague's initial effort is best summed up thusly :

Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Doctor Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap Accelerator--and vanished.

The rest, as they say, is history yet to be re-written.

THE END

Dedicated With Tenderness To The Memory of Wilfred Bailey 'Bill' Bixby, 1934-1993, Our Physician, Our Scientist, Our Fugitive, Our Favorite, and Our Best Friend

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A Leap In Anger : An artificial FAQ

by Rob Morris

These are the kinds of questions I think some readers might have about this story, given time. Hope it helps.

1 - Why do the back stories of these Quantum Leap characters differ from those I know from the show?

A : At the show's conclusion, Sam undertook one last on-screen leap, convincing Beth Calavicci to wait for her MIA husband Al to return from captivity in North Vietnam. The screen then stated that Beth and Al were still married to this day, and had four daughters. It also stated that Sam never went home. Yet, can that statement be forever trusted? When QL started out, Sam was not married to Donna Eleece, his brother died in Vietnam in 1970 and probably a few other things I've forgotten. Think how Tom Beckett's living would have changed or mitigated things. His and Sam's father died from poor health habits, among other things. But wouldn't the death of a son accelerate all this, and if that son were still around, could it not have mitigated it, maybe adding one to three years for Mr. Beckett? And if her father and two brothers were watching out for her, couldn't it have helped Katie Beckett avoid or at least more quickly escape her first abusive marriage?

While happily-ever-after is a bit much to expect, I believe Sam's leaps had laid the groundwork for a better world for him and those he held dear. Would a married man with a living brother and less harried sister have been the same man we saw when the show began?

And as for Al, imagine if his running-gag trips to court to deal with his many ex-wives were turned into soccer pick-ups, parent-teacher conferences, and the like. He still would have done things like ogle Marilyn (Not to be sexist, but who can blame him? :) ), but would he have given the same advice here and there? We don't know. It is safe to say that the changes would have affected how he met Sam (Not if, but when--Batman always finds a Robin).

So where does this take place? I'd say in about the seventh to fourteenth cycle of changes, with the loop resetting each time Sam makes a change. So in the current 'original history', Tom Beckett returns home, but loses his platoon in the battle (interference by Lothos?) and is bitter, ala 'Born On The Fourth Of July'. Sam's task this time is to save the unit from an all-out ambush. It's been speculated that Sam's acts made Al a prisoner longer, but is that the result of every leap cycle?

So in this cycle, Sam and Donna met in college, not at Starbright, and Sam saved Al's marriage from his struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in the 70's, instead of saving Al's career in the 80's.

And so forth. One life touches another, especially the lives of those closest to you.

2 - Why is David Banner alive in 1991, when we saw him die in 1990 in the third TV-Movie?

In short, Bill Bixby never meant TDOTIH to be the last movie. That's just how it worked out, sadly. I just came up with a scenario I hoped was similar to what they might have done in a 'Rebirth' movie. The agent he fell in love with was played by Elizabeth Gracen, an actress who also played the Immortal Amanda on 'Highlander', and this story hints that her ID in the TV-Movie was one that was foisted on her, and she recovered her memories after.

3- Sam and David knew each other before their adventures began?

They did here. It involves some stretching, but not too much.

4 - Sam has leapt into people with all manner of differences and conditions. Why did the Hulk affect him in this way?

Part of its artistic license. It wouldn't be much of an Xover if Sam didn't become The Hulk. Plus, as we saw on QL with Oswald and a few others, strong personalities still have an effect on Sam.

5 - I never heard that David's sister Helen Banner (Diana Muldaur) died.

In the last movie, David told Dr. Pratt that he and his wife Amy were all the family he had left. I extrapolated the loss of his sister from that, and a scenario was borrowed from another Nicholas Corea/Kenneth Johnston show, 'Walker Texas Ranger', to explain how she died. It was either that or have her step down an empty elevator shaft.

6 - Does Sam transfer bodies or swap images with the leapees?

For my stories, Sam is only seen as the leapee. The body explanation seems contradicted by many later episodes.

7 - Why was David, except as the Hulk, able to be seen as himself?

One part of it was foreshadowing. An indication that the usual rules did not apply, leading to something bigger. Another part of it is that if Sam swaps images with his leapee, and that leapee has an alternate form, do all the usual rules apply? My answer was to compromise.

8 - Why was Ziggy almost sinister in some parts?

Ziggy's always been spoken of as mercurial and selfish, and I'm sure at times that can seem quite off-putting.

9 - Who was that evil being who appeared as Al?

The devil, or a devil-like being such as The First Evil on 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer' or The Millenial Demon on 'Highlander The Series'. Possibly also the sponsor of Project Lothos, in some fashion. I know many fans regard Lothos' origin as lying in Sam's babbling in 1969 to some dirty secret agent types. Since that is never made clear, I stand with what I wrote.

10 - Could David have really fingered Jack McGee as having caused the 1977 fire?

With forensic techniques as they are, quite possibly. With Ziggy's aid? David could have told Jack what sort of soup he had for dinner the night before the fire.

11 - Which Peter Parker was that who saved Jack at the last minute?

Marvel Comics and CBS-TV only ever got four of MC's heroes to the small screen. TIH was obviously the most successful. Captain America had two or three TV movies, though the character was in this case too far removed from the comics' character to ever catch on. Doctor Strange had only one TV movie, closer to canon but no cigar. The two TV-movie Hulk co-stars (Daredevil and Thor) also never caught on. Spider-Man had his own series, but very briefly.

For the purposes of my story universe, people with vast powers tend to keep them quiet. So Thor and Don Blake ended their quest, and Daredevil caught Wilson Fisk. Doctor Strange died young, opposing the Master from 'Buffy'. Captain America prevented the deadly 1982 barracks bombing in Lebanon, at the cost of his own life. Then came Spidey.

This version of Peter Parker is different, IMHO. His Jameson just never seemed quite as obsessed with labeling him a public menace. His Uncle Ben's death was not caused by any action of his. There was no Fantastic Four or Avengers to aid. No Green Goblin, No Ock, No Vulture, etc., probably meant that when he hung up his suit, no one really noticed, and he was not tricked/guilted etc into resuming his career. His last sort-of love interest on the show (No Gwen or MJ here) was a woman named Emily Chan, played by MASH/Star Trek vet Rosalind Chao. For the purposes of my story, they eventually married, making RC Mrs. Klinger, Mrs. O'Brien and Mrs. Parker as well.

12 - Which Marvel Universe did David leap into?

One where the Modern Age Of Heroes begins in the late Cold War, thus still keeping it recognizable to older readers. Betty Ross is a scientist, as she was in two cartoons. David kills the abusive Brian Banner (In the comics, Bruce's father's name--NOT David, as in the 2003 movie's 'tribute') and saves that MU from the savage Hulk. Little differences range from David's presence affecting the Avengers' origin to a young, troubled hero named Warpwave, strictly my creation to represent a second-or-third-tier hero like often populates the Avengers. David is helping him in the best tradition of Quantum Leap and The Incredible Hulk.

Well, I hope I covered it all. Thanks!

Rob Morris


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